Good Sunday everyone. It clear sailing for another day or so before our weather starts to crank up in a big, big way! This will all be coming in time for the extended Thanksgiving holiday weekend and will make for some wild times for those traveling across our region and much of the country. We may be talking about everything from heavy rain and thunderstorms to cold temps and snow… and all that may come within a 24 hour period.

The weather today into Monday couldn’t be better with highs in the 60s under partly sunny skies. That about sums up the easy part of the forecast.

The action gets started late Monday night into Tuesday when a swath of rain moves in from the west. This will have some heavy downpours with it as it rolls through here. Consider that the opening act to what is to come from Wednesday through Friday. This is looking like one of the more active Thanksgiving holidays I can ever remember and is one that you will definitely need to keep track of the weather.

Low pressure will be rolling across the midwest int the western Great Lakes late Wednesday into early Thanksgiving day. This will drag a SLOW moving boundary our way and this will likely have a few waves of low pressure rolling northeastward along it through Friday. There will be a ton of moisture streaming into our region during this time meaning heavy rains are a certainty. The models are increasingly going toward the solution that would also bring a period of wet snow on the back end of the departing precip shield later Thursday night into early Friday. This is something a lot of the models have hinted at at one point or another over the past few days. The GFS Ensembles have been showing this with each run and now the operation GFS is going toward what the rest of the family has been saying…



The first order of business we will need to watch for will be the heavy rain threat and POSSIBLE flooding for some areas. That sounds crazy to even say after the amazing dryness of the past several months… but it is something that must be talked about. Look at the latest rain forecast from the GFS from Tuesday through Thursday night…



That will certainly get your attention as it shows some pockets approaching 5 inches during this time period. If you have been reading this blog lately… you have seen me posting a lot of model runs showing heavy rainfall, so this isn’t a one and done model run. As a matter of fact… all the models are forecasting, at least, a good one to three inches of rain.

I am sold on the heavy rain threat and the cold air coming in behind it. I am still not ready to bite on the potential for anything more than a period of light snow or flurries for Thursday night and Friday. That may change over the next few days if the models keep showing the cold catching the precip in plenty time to lay down some wet snow… which is exactly what the GFS does…



I want to stress… that is what ONE run of ONE model is showing so don’t run off telling everyone I said you were going to see a good snow Friday. Well… not unless I actually say that in a few days.

I mentioned the GFS Ensembles were among the first to pick up on the above scenario… the Canadian Model was right there with them and it continues to look the part…




The GFS, GFS Ensembles, Canadian and UKMET all show a nice shot of cold coming for Friday into Saturday and this northwesterly wind flow can even produce a snow shower or flurries on its own. You notice I have not used the European Model of late and that is because I don’t think it has had a good handle on the overall pattern as a trough coming out of the west is not something this model usually is good at forecasting. It has a tendency of leaving too much energy behind and I think it is doing so once again. It basically has  a few hours of cold behind the front Friday morning and that is it and that’s a radical change from what it had been showing up until a few days ago. It is the lone dog howling at the moon with that scenario right now. We will see if it stays that way or if the lone dog turns into a pack.

With the active weather ahead of us this week… I don’t want to overlook what I see as a very good start to December for cold and snow lovers across much of the country. We may have two shots at a big storm during the first week to 10 days of December! The Ensembles are all going cold as far as they can see into the month ahead. Buckle up… it should be a run ride over the next several weeks.

I will have another update later today so check back. Have a great Sunday and take care.