Good evening, gang. On this Christmas Eve, I wanted to take a moment to drop by for a quick update on a wild temps swing for Christmas Day, another round of heavy rain and thunderstorms, and the return to winter before the year ends.

Chilly air is filtering into the northern half of the state with lots of clouds, mist and drizzle all around. Watch for areas of fog if you’re going to be travelling.

That chilly air hangs tough across the northern half of the state on Christmas Day. As mild air surges in from the south, that sets up one heck of a temperature gradient from north to south. Check out the NAM high temps…

nam

70 is possible in the south and west, with low 40s in the far north. Holy Christmas!

The mild air then wins the battle by Monday as temps take off and soar deep into the 60s…

nam-2

That’s ahead of a cold front that brings a line of thunderstorms in here late Monday into Monday night. Heavy rainfall and very gusty winds are likely with this…

nam-3

Chillier air settles in behind this for Tuesday, but the numbers go back up a bit on Wednesday as another cold front drops in. This will introduce much colder air in here for the second half of the week…

euro-3

Some snow showers and flurries will be possible in that setup.

New Year’s Weekend will throw another system our way. How that arrives continues to flip around from model to model and from run to run. The latest European Model has abandoned the Polar Vortex idea (which was never likely), and replaced it with a bigger storm of rain to snow…

euro-2

The new version of the GFS has more of a snow look… gfs

The pattern for January is threatening to go toward a setup I didn’t think was possible this winter. Hmmm

I will update as usual later tonight. Merry Christmas and take care.