A few more snowflakes

As for today, I think we will only see rainstorms or light snow showers, with no impact on our roads. Highs will struggle to reach freezing (32 degrees – 0 degrees Celsius), with a 5 to 10 mph north wind.

Mostly cloudy Thursday night, with lows in the mid-20s (-4 degrees Celsius). North-northwest wind between 2 and 5 mph.

Friday’s cloud cover is a tough call because, just as a large mass of clouds moves, another will approach. So right now, I think we’ll start the day mostly cloudy, we’ll be partly cloudy again for a few hours, and then we’ll be cloudy again. The highs move towards the mid-1930s (2 degrees Celsius).

Mostly cloudy Friday night, with lows in the upper 20s (-2 degrees Celsius).

There is a change to discuss the weekend forecast. Over the last few days I have talked about a weak cold front crossing the area on Saturday and it seemed that this front would be progressive (not in the political sense; ). In other words, I would cross the area late Saturday or Saturday night, and we would have already finished it.

However, each front or storm system is associated with a higher level disturbance and now it appears another the upper-level disturbance originating in the four western corners will follow through Oklahoma and then turn northeast toward us, gradually ending the upper-level system associated with the weak front. This will do two things: slow down the front and increase both the duration and the amount of rainfall.

Therefore, I expect there to be a chance of very light rain and / or snow on Saturday, with rainfall lasting well into Sunday. A big question is the thermal profile of the atmosphere: will it be cold enough at some point to give us snow accumulation?

This is a very delicate detail that remains to be seen: one model says yes, the other says no. I hope to be able to resolve it on Friday. Saturday highs should reach close to 40 degrees (4 to 5 degrees Celsius) and Sunday highs in the upper 30s (3 to 4 degrees Celsius).

After a windy and relatively mild day in Festivus (Wednesday), a powerful cold front will cross the Festivus area at night and bring us a windy and cold day on Christmas Eve, with the possibility of snow showers. Christmas day itself looks cold and chilly, but it should be dry.

Highs Thursday and Friday in the top twenty (-2 degrees Celsius), with temperatures starting on Christmas morning in the middle up to a higher teens (-8 degrees Celsius), with a bit of cold as well. We still hope to be able to extract a white Christmas: it will all depend on what happens on Thursday with the lake-effect snow bands developing.

Fingers crossed!