This year marks the 67th annual lighting of the WRAL-TV tower in Raleigh, an annual tradition that has grown to include celebrations with towers at American Tobacco Campus in Durham and Rocky Mount Mills.


WRAL Tower Lighting: WRAL lights the towers in Raleigh, Durham and Rocky Mount

WRAL Tower Lighting

Michelle Mackonochie - familiar to WRAL viewers after five years as part of the morning news team - will anchor the 4 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. newscasts with Dan Haggerty, and the 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts with Gerald Owens. 

WRAL welcomes Michelle Mackonochie to evening newscasts beginning Jan. 5

Michelle Mackonochie

What it really means to be an organ and bone marrow donor

Stay up to date with WRAL’s Weather-forecast news and reporting coverage

Weather-forecast News and Reporting Coverage | WRAL

Weather-forecast Coverage

All fire departments urge the public to avoid burning outdoors until further notice. The combination of gusty winds (we're expected to feel winds up to 30 mph), dry conditions and low humidity, on top of severe drought conditions, can stir rapid fire growth. 

NC fire officials call for pause to outdoor burns due to dry conditions

All fire departments urge the public to avoid burning outdoors until further notice.

Some National Weather Service offices are reducing and even suspending balloon launches due to staffing issues.

Ask the Meteorologist: Will the reduction of weather balloon launches affect the forecast?

A critical weather tool is disappearing. How fewer weather balloons could put you more at risk during a storm.

Get the latest WRAL WeatherCenter Forecast whenever you need it, including the DUALDoppler5000 and the 7-Day Forecast.

<p>Meteorologist Grant Skinner here in the Weather Center. Some more brief showers are possible today, mainly light rain, and that best chance will be south of the triangle as a front lingers to our south. We'll see lingering cloud cover as well. Some breaks in the clouds late today, but otherwise mostly cloudy. Then warming up, highs will push into the 70s this weekend, so it'll be much warmer. Here's Futurecast. Let's start with 1 p.m. You can see scattered light rain, mainly to the south, but we have sun that's worked its way north. And then we'll, this will gradually work south and east through the rest of the day. By 5:30, the majority of it is to our south and east, but a couple of brief showers are possible to the north, and we'll keep some lingering cloud cover as well all the way through Saturday morning. And we could see some breaks in the clouds for our northern spots, but I think we'll stay mostly cloudy. The majority of the day. And the additional rain that we'll see through Saturday is only around 0.1 of an inch for the triangle, but some higher amounts towards the coastline where they'll see some more consistent rain as that front stays to the south. Some lingering clouds, brief showers a day, highs reach the mid-50s for most spots. Some areas could reach the upper 50s. We're back to the 70s, a high of 74 degrees on Sunday, but it doesn't last long. Look at Monday and Tuesday, back to around 50 degrees for our highs. That's because our next front will pass through the area. There'll be a chance for some isolated showers in the first half of next week. Looks like mainly rain for that. Again, highs at around 50 both Monday and Tuesday, then back to the mid 60s on Wednesday and the 70s again by Thursday. So some ups and downs over the next 7 days. We're in the 50s today. Back in the 70s on Sunday, we'll have more sunshine this weekend after a cloudy Friday with some brief showers possible.</p>