Gray skies to linger over region

Gray will be the color of the day Thursday, even after the morning fog lifts, WRAL Meteorologist Mike Maze predicted.

"We've got the clouds in place. And I hope you like gray," Maze said. "We had it yesterday, we had a lot of it the day before; we're going to have more gray today."

Early Thursday, fog reduced visibility to between a half-mile and three-quarters of a mile in some places.

Cloudy skies will persist through the day and keep temperatures down in the mid-80s, but the chance of rain will be less than on Wednesday.

"If we see any rain, it would be really in the form of drizzle, maybe a little bit of light rain," Maze said. "You can carry an umbrella with you today, but you're not going to need it like you did yesterday."

The sun might peek through the clouds for a few minutes on Friday, but clouds will dominate for most of the day again. High humidity will help drum up a chance of afternoon thunderstorms.

However, the weekend promises more sun – and higher temperatures, getting up into the low 90s.

A cold front will likely usher in a cool-down early next week, and Hurricane Ike could also make itself felt in the state then.

"Some (computer models) even track the remains to North Carolina. We could see some rainfall here early next week," Maze said.

Any heavy rains have the possibility to create flooding on already saturated ground.

The National Weather Service has warned of flooding along the Neuse River in Lenoir County, the Lumber River in Robeson County and the Cape Fear River in Bladen County through at least Saturday.

With Wednesday's rainfall of 1.19 inches, Raleigh-Durham International Airport has gotten more than 6 inches since Sept. 1. Fayetteville has received more than 5 inches of rain in the same period and nearly 46 inches so far this year

The capital city has gotten 39.33 inches of rain since Jan. 1 – more than 8 inches over the normal total and 15 inches more than at this point in 2007.