Fitzgerald, GA Weather

Key Messages

Updated at 203 AM EDT Wed Oct 21 2026

- Windy conditions are expected during daytime hours from Friday through Sunday, following passage of a dry back door cold front. Gusts of 25-35 mph are forecast this weekend.

- Hazardous marine conditions are expected from Friday through Sunday, as northeast winds increase to near-gale force at times following a back door cold frontal passage on Friday. Peak winds are expected Saturday night, when gales are possible.

- Breezy and gusty conditions from Friday through Sunday, along with the recent lack of rainfall, will bring elevated fire weather conditions this weekend.

Update

Issued at 947 PM EDT Tue Oct 20 2026

The forecast is on track, updates don't appear necessary.

Short Term

(This Evening through Wednesday) Issued at 327 PM EDT Tue Oct 20 2026

The air mass is dry and stable. North to northwest flow aloft prevails, while northeasterly low-level flow is reinforcing the dry air. Satellite- derived PW imagery shows values of 0.4 to 0.5 inches this afternoon. This morning's 12z Urban Sky UA sounding from Madison County showed a pronounced stable layer between 940 mb and 820 mb. Little change in sensible weather and the air mass at large are expected through Wednesday, though lighter wind and a small increase in low-level thickness suggest an upward trend of a few degrees in the high temperature for tomorrow.

Long Term

(Wednesday night through next Tuesday) Issued at 327 PM EDT Tue Oct 20 2026

No rain is in the forecast through next Tuesday. The main story will be breezy to windy conditions this weekend.

A persistent pattern and little change in sensible conditions are expected through Thursday night.

The pattern starts to evolve from Friday through the weekend. At 500 mb, the southern end of a longwave trough currently off the U.S. East Coast will cut off and start to retrograde toward the FL Peninsula on Friday. Over the weekend, the cut-off low will pivot southward and reach an unusually low latitude over the Straits of Florida, Cuba, or the northwest Caribbean, spawning a broad and fairly deep surface trough across central Cuba to the southeast Bahamas and beyond into the Atlantic.

North of all that action, a strong surface high will set up over the U.S. Mid- Atlantic region over the course of Friday and Friday night. At first, this will push a back-door cold front through our region on Friday, followed by an increase in northeasterly low- level flow. By this weekend, there will be an impressive MSLP gradient of 25 mb between the surface high over New Jersey and low pressure in the Southeast Bahamas. The tightest part of this gradient will set up near our latitude. E-NE 925 mb winds will peak on Saturday night in the 35-40 knot range over south-central GA and the FL Big Bend, supporting gusty conditions this weekend. Surface wind gusts of 25-35 mph are expected areawide during the day on Saturday and Sunday.

In the fast and well-mixed flow, Atlantic-sourced maritime moisture may be sufficiently deep for a few low-topped showers to get as far west as the Suwannee Valley this weekend. For now, the forecast is dry, but we may need to eventually add low PoPs over that way. Elsewhere across our region, the forecast will remain rain-free.