Good Friday to one and all and thanks for dropping by the Center. We have some wild weather to track as we make our way into the busy Thanksgiving week ahead. Everything from warm and windy to heavy rain to a big change to cold and wintry.

How it all plays out exactly has to be ironed out in the coming days… but there is littler question in my mind that next week is going to be very busy. This is likely to cause some MAJOR travel troubles across much of the country… including right here on the home front.

Let’s run down the weather directly in front of us before we get to much into next week.

We will start out this Friday with locally dense fog and low clouds. It will be interesting to see just how long it takes all this to break up as that will highly impact the temps. If we assume the low clouds break quickly.. thermometers will warm into the low and middle 50s.

The weekend looks great with sunny skies and temps warming into the upper 50s and low 60s Saturday and 60s for Sunday.

That brings us to next week. While we have talked a ton about the coming change to a colder and likely wintry pattern for Thanksgiving into the weekend… something we should be talking a lot more about is the heavy rain threat before that.

A major blast of winter will be across the western half of the country and will be slowing working eastward into a mild and moist air mass that will be in place around here. A series of low pressures will develop to our west and southwest and roll northeastward into the Ohio Valley from Tuesday into early Thanksgiving Day. There is good chance the final low that moves through late Wednesday into Thursday really cranks up and cuts toward the eastern Great Lakes. Here is a map I made of the setup…



This pattern is likely to bring a lot of rain to our region as totals of 2 to 3 inches is well within our reach during that stretch.

The models really like the heavy rain threat and the GFS is showing locally 3″+…



Let’s break down the busy week as it stands now…

– Monday will be a warm day with highs in the 60s with increasing clouds.

– Rains will arrive Monday night and Tuesday as our first wave of low pressure rolls through. Heavy rain will be likely during this time and winds will pick up as well. Thunder?

– Rain will pick back up Wednesday and temps will likely surge back up into the 60s after a bit of a dip the day before.

– The Wednesday night into Thanksgiving time frame will be wet and windy with a blast of cold air moving in Thanksgiving day . The timing on all that depends on the possible big low deepening across the Ohio Valley en route to the Great Lakes. The models have this one run then lose it the next and won’t figure out it out until next week. Given the fall trends of strong low pressure systems… I would tend to think this storm would deepen.

– No matter what the low does… the cold will crash in here from west to east Thanksgiving Day. Temps will tank as the front blows through and we could see some flakes before the day is over.

– Black Friday will be cold with the chance for some flurries or even a snow shower if the winds are right.

– With a deep trough being carved out across the eastern US… I have my eye on a system that may dive in here over the weekend with a wintry threat.

– Overall… this will be a very cold upcoming holiday weekend and is the opening of a wintry pattern that will take us into most of December.

I will have another update coming later this afternoon or this evening so check back. I will also have updates all weekend long as we get set for a very busy holiday week ahead of us.

Have a great Friday and take care.