Temperatures this morning weren’t able to drop very low thanks to a “blanket” of cloud cover brought on by the increased moisture in the area today.

When the sky is cloudy at night, it prevents heat at the Earth’s surface from radiating freely out to space, as it would on a clear night.  This is why an overcast sky at night is sometimes referred to as a “heat blanket”, keeping the warm air in and thus leading to warmer low temperatures.

The “heat blanket effect”, as illustrated by USA Today

Here are some of the warmer low temperatures this morning from around the region:

Georgetown: 81 deg

Camp Mabry: 79 deg

Giddings: 79 deg

La Grange: 79 deg

For the rest of your Saturday, you can expect mostly cloudy skies with increasing rain chances.  A cold front draped just to our north will act as a focus for much of the shower activity.  This front will drift slowly southward today and tonight, bringing central Texas the best chance of rainfall we’ve seen in some time.  ABIA hasn’t seen measurable rainfall for a full month!

Be sure to stay up-to-date on the showers and storms in central Texas throughout the weekend with the KXAN First Warning Weather interactive radar.