Good Sunday to one and all. Our chilly run of very wet weather is finally coming to an end. We’re going from absolutely ugly weather to a fantastic fall stretch of sun and pleasant temps. While we enjoy the gorgeous weather to come, I’m already tracking colder changes down the road.

A leftover shower early today will give way to some sun and temps hitting the upper 60s to low 70s this afternoon. That kicks off our great run of weather for most of the week ahead. Daytime highs will be in the 70s with lows dropping into the low 50s. Skies stay partly sunny through Thursday.

A cold front drops in from the northwest by Friday with a band of showers and some thunder. Winds look pretty gusty with temps coming down several degrees. Several of the models still try to pop a slow-moving area of low pressure along this front. The GFS is the most robust of the bunch and spits out some decent 3 day rains…

GFS

It’s the following week that should be able to produce some pretty good cold shots into our region…

GFS 2

That matches up well with some of the analogs I’m toying with and matches what the look of the pattern should spit out.

The Canadian CIPS model is out with a new forecast for the winter ahead. It comes out around the first of each month and I’ve been posting what it’s shown since August. Here’s the latest month by month forecast of the upper levels…

Canadian

Canadian 2Canadian 3Canadian 4

Notice the retrograding ridge across Canada and the low heights across the Aleutian Islands. That setup argues for a decent trough in the eastern part of the United States, and that’s what the model shows. Throw in an active, El Nino induced, southern branch of the jet stream and you can get some big storm systems.

I will ramp up the winter talk over the next few weeks.

Have a great Sunday and take care.