Good evening, everyone. It’s a dreary day wrapping up, as scattered showers continue to work across the region. This action scoots away tonight, but a very active pattern is about to settle in here later this week into Thanksgiving week.

Here’s regional radar to track the light showers…

We have cold fronts moving our way every couple of days with the next one arriving Wednesday. That will a little more widespread stuff compared to today, but the focus is on the Friday-Saturday storm system. This one has the looks of a big time wind maker across our region, and may even throw some strong storms our way…

A big temps spike ahead of that front will be followed by a big temp drop being it. The real cold lags just behind the front and arrives Saturday night and Sunday…

If we can get a true northwesterly wind to develop Sunday or Sunday night, then some flakes will be possible. Some of the recent models have been showing this possibility…

That may be a huge lake effect outbreak following this storm.

The various operational models will have the usual wild swings on how the pattern looks. You will see big changes from run to run, because that’s what operational models do from this far out. The Ensembles are made up of dozens of individual runs, spitting out the average from each. Granted, the data is smoothed out, but it’s a good indication of where the pattern goes.

The GFS ensembles show a healthy cold shot late this weekend, with cold digging in for Thanksgiving week…

Those same “smoothed out” ensembles are also showing flake chances late this weekend through Thanksgiving weekend…

Even individual runs of the operational members show the wintry potential from time to time. The GFS shows this for Thanksgiving…

The Canadian is also showing some wintry potential in the lead up to Thanksgiving…

 

Find some analogs, forecast the pattern and watch the trends, don’t just regurgitate what one run of one model says. Unfortunately, this is becoming a lost art amongst forecasters. Sigh

I will have a full blown super-duper update later tonight, so check back.. Enjoy the evening and take care.