Warming Trend.

After the brief cool-down of today and tonight, look for temperatures to be much above normal as we end the month of January. In fact, this entire month has been quite mild with average temperatures so far running nearly 6 degrees above normal. For those of you wondering where all the snow is, let me remind you of the Jan-Mar period back in 2009. In case you had forgotten, we had received very little snow until the end of March when we picked up nearly 10 inches; so don't give up on the snow just yet.

At any rate, after a chilly start to Sunday morning with lows generally in the 20s under fair skies and light southerly winds, we should be warming up quickly during the day Sunday as those S to SW winds start kicking in and with lots of sunshine. Daytime highs are expected to be near 60 for Sunday afternoon and well into the 60s for Monday and Tuesday. Our nights will also be warming up so the month of January will be ending on a very mild note.

A weak boundary will be dropping into the area Wednesday but there will not be much of a cool down associated with it and only a slight chance of rain, mainly for the more eastern counties. After that, it starts getting a little more interesting. Both the GFS and the European models have pulled a flip on us going into the coming weekend and not only are they inconsistent with their earlier solutions, they have gone their separate ways regarding how this weekend will play out. With that in mind, have introduced a slight chance of precipitation from Thursday-Saturday to account for the uncertainty in the moisture fields and have started trending temperatures down. This may flip again, so did not want to get too carried away. But, there could be some significant changes in the weather by the time the coming weekend gets here so check back for updates.

In the meantime, stay tuned.

Dick Faurot