Saturday Evening Tidbits...

Some quick evening notes here....

• Showers push in to roughly the eastern half of the viewing area Sunday afternoon and evening....but the rain should leave before the atmosphere cools enough for anything wintry.
• The upcoming week will be cold....below average for highs and lows. I still think low to mid 20s Tuesday morning.
• The models can still not figure out how to handle the end of the week possibilities. Today's 0z GFS kept the energy more bundled, and thus, a more impressive late-week system. Other runs shear the energy out and nothing impressive develops. We shall see...
• Had to switch mental gears today...after anchoring the evening weather shift for the Triad Wednesday through Friday, I am back in the Charlotte market today and tomorrow.
  
• Can we please have some sort of college football playoff system. I don't want to hear the excuses....I am tired of having to debate every year who should play for a championship. Every other level of football has playoffs....why can't Division I football???? No, we have to have another year of debating who should play Ohio State......Florida or Michigan??? (assuming Florida holds on to win the SEC champ. game...although it is a dog fight right now)

End of rant.....have a great night!

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The week ahead....

Cold.....that about sums up next week. I think every day from Sunday through at least Friday will likely feature below average high and low temperatures. Look for many highs in the 40s and lows in the 20s next week.

We have two potential storm systems to deal with. The first one is a coastal area of low pressure that will form later Sunday and Sunday night just off of the Carolina coast. I think some showers will be possible over the eastern parts of both the Charlotte and Triad News 14 markets Sunday afternoon and night. And, while it is a close call, I think the rain leaves just prior to the deeper cold air arriving Sunday night. So, at this point, I don't think we have any wintry weather issues with that system. But it is fairly close, and we will watch it.

The second potential storm system is toward the end of the work week. However, that is about the extent of that I can tell you about that system. There are players on the field for a system to posssibly form Thursday or Friday, but whether or not those players come together properly or not remain to be seen. So, stay tuned on that one.

Also, if you remember (and you can read the whole thing by looking in the archives on the right), my forecast for December was for Charlotte to average 0.5 degrees above normal for the month. I still think that forecast is in OK shape. While we will see well below average temps through next week, I think the mid-month period sees a nice warm-up before possibly cooling down again toward Christmas. So, the forecast for December still looks OK right now.

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Impressive dewpoint drops....

The dewpoint at Greensbobo dropped 22 degrees in 2 hours this afternoon (from 62 to 40)....impressive stuff. Charlotte has seen a 24 degree dewpoint drop in 3 hours. Can you tell a cold front has moved through???

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Cold front sweeping through

The severe weather threat is over for our area. Thankfully, it never really got going. The cold front is moving through western parts of the area right now, and it will sweep rather quickly eastward. It is quite warm out there as I am typing this with temps running in the low to mid 70s.

The wind shift with the cold front is lagging a bit back to the west. So, we really won't see any rapid temperature drops until late afternoon and especially early evening.

I am just diving into all of the model data for the weekend and next week. WIll post more a bit later on....

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Watching the radar....

Watching to see if any active storms try to develop today. So far, all is quiet. The window of opportunity for any active storms would be later this morning into early afternoon. Again, so far, so good.

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Thursday Evening Post

I am amazed watching the big storm system wrap up over the Lower Mississippi Valley. I simply love the weather, and watching a storm system like that take shape is a thing of beauty to me.

Tremendous snow totals are going to occur with this storm system. I think a strip os 12-20" snows will occur from eastern Oklahoma up through Illinois. Blizzard conditions will likely develop in the areas seeing the heavy snows, and travel will become impossible in those areas.

Around here, we are closely watching the potential for some severe weather as the cold front races through here tomorrow. It appears the window of opportunity for severe weather will be from about 7am until 2pm tomorrow. Damaging winds will be the primary severe weather threat.

There will not be much instability for this system to work with, but the dynamics are impressive. We all remember what happened with out last system that rolled through similar to this, so we will monitor it closely.

I think it is almost time to give up on our coastal system Sunday into Monday. It just looks fairly doubtful right now that the low will track close enough to the coast to give us precip. However, it is still close, and I will not completely write if off yet.

Our next storm system looks to roll in around next Thursday. It seems the GFS has indicated this storm system rolling through on a majority of its runs over the past couple of days, and the 0z European model jumped on board as well. I think chances are we will indeed see a system roll through during that time-period, but any specifics are impossible to forecast right now. However, I do think it holds some interesting possibilities around here, so stay tuned....

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MNF Snow

How about that snowy football game on Monday Night Football. Pretty neat to see, and not an everyday happening in Seattle.

There are some interesting forecast aspects around here over the next 15 days....if time allows, I will delve into some of that tomorrow. If not then, then certainly a full post will come online Wednesday.

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Sunday Morning Tidbits....

• More great weather today. Get out and enjoy, and be safe if you are travelling.
• Some of the latest modelling has backed off a bit on the amount of cold air for late this week. At this point, I will stay the course and continue with highs in the 40s and lows in the 20s for Saturday and Sunday.
• The models are struggling to handle how the end of the week upper trough will set-up, so any guess as to a possible surface system have to remain on hold for now.
  

Everyone have a great day. God bless....

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