Good Friday, everyone. Today is the day of returns. Many folks will be returning gifts they didn’t want, while others will be returning from being over the river and through the woods. It looks like the weather will cooperate for both groups with some sunshine and milder temps.

Highs today range from 50 in the eats to the mid 50s in the west. Enjoy it because things are a changing as we head into the weekend. Rain gets ready to return as arctic air slowly works back toward the bluegrass state to end the year.

Rain develops across the west early Saturday and rolls east from there…

NAM

That’s the simulated radar from the NAM and shows a lot of damp weather. The rain on Sunday will be much colder than what we see on Saturday as temps drop into the upper 30s from west to east. That’s as a cold front worksย in. That slow movement allows another wave of low pressure to develop along it Sunday night and Monday. That one has more rain with a touch of snow on the northern edge…

Canadian 3

This is being pushed by a HUGE arctic high pressure digging into the plains states. Cold air will continue to push in here on Tuesday with some flurries possible. That cold really takes hold as we say goodbye to 2014 and hello to 2015. The new version of the GFS shows some very cold numbers…

GFS 3

The Canadian Model is a little colder than that…

Canadian 4

Those numbers would be very impressive with a bare ground! Speaking of that bare ground… when do we see that change? The pattern now has the cold air to work with… that’s something we did not have for most of December. We should keep the active southern branch of the jet stream and that means these two are going to try to hook up.

That looks to happen a day or two into the new year. The GFS…

GFS 2

An earlier run of the same model had a similar setup…

GFS

I will have updates later today. Have a good one and take care.