Good Thursday to one and all. Our major fall storm system has arrived and it’s in no big hurry to get out of town. Rounds of rain, gusty winds and chilly temps will be common into the start of the Halloween weekend. Once into early November, we have to be on guard for cold shots leading to winter getting started quicker than normal.

Let’s begin this pre-Halloween party with a breakdown of the storm upon us:

  • Rounds of rain are common through Saturday night. There’s even a small chance for some thunder.
  • A general 1″-2″ of rain shows up during this time.
  • Some breaks in the rain will show up , but the windows of “dry” may not be very big.
  • Wind gusts to 30mph will be possible from time to time.
  • Temps remain much chillier than normal for highs and a little above normal for lows. Highs of 50-55 are common with the chance for some upper 40s.
  • The rain moves out in time for what looks to be a pleasant Halloween.

Here are your radars to track today’s spiraling bands of rain…

The pattern after this into the first week of November will likely feature much colder air sinking into the country. The exact details are still to be ironed out, but the models continue to be very enthusiastic on the cold shot and even the potential for some early flakes trying to show up.

I’ll get more into that later today.

If we look longer down the weather road into Thanksgiving week, we find the CFS with that deep trough hanging tough in the eastern half of the country…

Now, if we take the CFS control run and ask it to spit out the 30 day temp departures from November 10-December 10 it gives us this look…

Interesting.

I will drop by for another update later today. Have a terrific Thursday and take care.