Slow Warming Trend to Continue.

The fog this morning and low clouds into the afternoon delayed the thaw a bit for today, but we finally made it above the freezing mark according to the official recording station out at the airport by 2PM this afternoon. You may recall we dropped below freezing at 7:30 this past Friday morning, so this has been another extensive period of time in the freezer.

With respect to the fog, a repeat performance appears likely tonight as a weak wind shift will be approaching with very light winds which will allow us to saturate once again during the overnight hours. In fact, the fog is expected to form more quickly tonight as it should be getting foggy by midnight and then persisting till after sunrise on Christmas morning. That should have burned off by late morning leaving us with a lot of sunshine through the afternoon hours. Also, we will have a northerly wind up to 10 mph or so for much of the day but temperatures should still make it to the low-mid 40s for daytime highs. A bit cooler than normal for Christmas Day to be sure, but the sunshine and light winds will still make for a pretty nice day.

A return to southerly winds on Thursday through Saturday will help to warm things up even more with daytime highs expected to reach the lower 50s by Friday and well into the 50s on Saturday, perhaps even up to 60. Then, our next cold front will be arriving that night followed by another big cool-down. Daytime highs will struggle to get much above freezing on Sunday, followed by 30s again Monday and then southerly winds kick back in to warm us back for New Years Eve.

This next cold front looks dry at this point as it looks to be moisture starved. That may change, but as you can see from the 7 day QPF map on the right, we are expected to be pretty much on the high and dry side of things through this forecast cycle.

Beyond that time frame, the longer range guidance remains divergent with one solution suggesting a storm system impacting us just after New Years Day and another solution keeping things quiet. Of note is the fact that these deterministic solutions have not been very stable recently although their ensemble means have been much more so. With that in mind, will not get too excited about any additional winter weather prospects till we see greater stability and run to run continuity.

In the meantime, would like to wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas. Stay tuned and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot