Good Thursday everyone. We have one more chilly day in store for the region before thermometers really begin to take off. This big warm up has perfect timing by arriving just in time for the weekend. Throw in sunny skies and you have the makings of some of the best fall weather of the year. Soak it up because I’m tracking a major temp change early next week.

Mainly sunny skies will be noted today with temps hitting the low and middle 50s in most areas. That’s still a bit below normal. Friday is when the warm up really kicks in with temps heading toward the 60-65 degree range. The weekend weather looks awesome with highs in the upper 60s to around 70 degrees as the sunshine continues. Winds will be fairly gusty from the southwest.

A major plains storm will crank up this weekend and produce a blizzard for areas of the west and severe weather in the plains. This storm will drag a strong cold front our way by late Monday and this will cross the state Monday night and early Tuesday. Here’s how the GFS sees it playing out…

That setup would produce a major temp drop of more than 20-30 degrees in a few hours as the front blows through here. The same model run does show showers and thunderstorms ending as a period of light snow and flurries as a wave of low pressure develops along the boundary…

The GFS Ensembles look similar…

The Canadian Model continues to be a little more robust with the low pressure development…

We have a pretty good consensus among the models for the potential to go from thunderstorms to snowflakes with this system. As always… we shall see.

Have a great Thursday and take care.