Good Thursday everybody and thanks for checking in. The weather today looks pretty good compared to what is coming down the road for the next several days as a big cutoff low brings some more nasty conditions to the region. We have talked about this potential for well over a week now and the time has come to get this bad boy in here.

Our short term weather looks to feature some of the best weather of the week and the best for a while. While we could see a stray shower or thundershower today… many areas will get in on some rays of sun. High temps today should generally run in the 70s with the warmest readings across the east with upper 70s possible.

Follow the temps and any stray shower…

Currents

The big upper level low will begin to swing in here later tonight into Friday. Moisture will increase from southwest to northeast ahead of this system and will lead to rains breaking out. These showers will carry us through much of Friday into Friday evening. Much cooler air pushes in during this time with highs on Friday likely in the 60s.

This closed low will then sit and spin right on top of the Ohio Valley into the weekend and early next week. Individual disturbances will rotate around this low like spokes on a bicycle wheel. These are often hard to time and each of these will lead to an increase in showers as they pass through. In between these “spokes”, we will see partly to mostly cloudy skies with a chance for a shower. This is not a total washout of a period as we will have several dry hours. It is just impossible to time such hours with any degree of confidence.

This pattern will result in another prolonged period of well below normal temps. Highs will generally run in the 60s this weekend into early next week with lows down into the 40s. Any day that features widespread rains outside your house can see highs only in the upper 50s.

This huge cuttoff low is another example of how the weather continues to run on the wild to extreme side of things. More evidence of this is a massive subpolar storm across southern Alaska. This storm is more than 2,000 miles wide! Take a look…

That is basically as wide as the lower 48 states! Wow.

Something else from the “wow” files is record snowfall in Switzerland. Some areas picked up 18″ of snow to go along with record cold over the past several days.

While this fell in the Alps… the snow level was the lowest ever recorded so early in the season. Maw Nature continues to be in a fowl mood and my suspicion is that continues into this coming winter here on the homefront.

Have a great Thursday and take care.