It's a good-news, bad-news thing concerning the weather.

Temperatures are expected to cool down later in the week, dropping to the 70s by the weekend, but rain could follow in that trend.

For today, though, Hall County area residents should expect another day of above-average warmth, with the mercury reaching the upper 80s, said Laura Belanger, meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Peachtree City.

It's as if summer has arrived a bit early.

"And I'm not quite ready for it," Belanger said, with a laugh.

Today, temperatures might hover around the Atlanta record high of 92 degrees, set in 1916, but probably won't approach the Athens record high of 96 degrees, set in 1911.

So what's causing all this steaminess?

"We have a high-pressure system that is very well supported aloft and is continuing to build across our area," Belanger said.

"Those are the type of situations we see in the summertime, where we've got dry high pressure sitting over us ... and in combination with that, we've got some higher dew points keeping our relative humidity a little bit higher," she added.

However, "we've sort of got a rainy weekend in store ... and Saturday, Sunday into Monday, we're only talking about highs in the 70s."

Storm chances are fairly slim, at this point, Belanger said.

"We're not seeing as good instabilities with this; we're not seeing as good a sheer," she said.

"That helps us define what our thunderstorm potential is and also what kind of tornado threat we have."

The South is still reeling from an April 27 outbreak of tornadoes, including parts of North Georgia. The violent storms struck an area about 5 miles south of the National Weather Service.

"We did cut it close, but we were able to maintain our awareness here at the office," Belanger said.