Good Friday, folks. It’s another dreary day for parts of the region as a northwest flow squeezes out some drizzle and light showers. As we look into the longer range, we find a pattern taking on more of a winter look as we head into the second half of next week.

Temps out there today are generally in the low and mid 50s with lots of clouds hanging around, especially in the central and east. This is also where the drizzle and scattered showers will continue to show up.

Here are your radars to follow along…

Clouds slowly clear early Saturday, leading to a pretty good afternoon with temps in the mid and upper 50s for many. We hit the 60-65 degree range on Sunday with a mix of sun and clouds and that nice weather should also roll into Monday.

As we enjoy some nice weather for the weekend, Tropical Storm Sara continues to skirt the coast of Honduras. This should eventually get into the southern Gulf of Mexico by early next week. Here’s the latest information and track forecast from the National Hurricane Center…

cone graphic

The latest spaghetti plots of the hurricane models show whatever is left of Sara getting into the central Gulf of Mexico…

Some of that system may get drawn into the massive trough coming from the Plains into the eastern half of the country. This is likely to spawn a huge storm system, but the evolution and placement of this storm is a work in progress for several more days.

One storm system moves through with rain and gusty winds Tuesday into Wednesday with the big storm system likely developing right after that Thursday into Friday. The latest trend from the operational models is for a slightly farther east storm that would bring rain and snow to our region.

Here’s the overnight GFS…

The prior run of the GFS was just a bit west…

The latest Canadian is a cross between those last few runs of the GFS…

That’s a VERY potent storm system.

The EURO sometimes keeps a little too much energy from ejecting out of the southwest, but it also goes with a big time storm system…

Those are certainly some interesting runs and give us an indication of the type of storm we can expect out of this setup. Again, the exact evolution and placement of this storm will be the determining factor on whether we have the chance for just a few flakes or something a little more important.

As that system pulls out next weekend, the models are showing the chance for another system to dig into the east during the Thanksgiving holiday period…

GFS

EURO

I’ll hit you up with another update later today. Until then, make it a great day and take care.