Chilly today, clipper late tomorrow, frigid next week...

Below is today's edition of the Carolina Weather Video...



It will be another fairly chilly day today with highs in the Piedmont in the upper 40s to lower 50s under a partly cloudy sky. Lows tonight will drop into the upper 20s to around 30 degrees.

Clipper system...

A fairly potent 'clipper' system will drop into the region late tomorrow. Typically the mountains will wring most of the precip out of these types of systems, and this will likely largely happen once again tomorrow. However, this system is potent enough that I think some precip will make it into the Piedmont and even to the coast.

What type of precip? Generally speaking, I expect most of the precip (that will likely move in late in the afternoon for the western Piedmont and into the evening for areas farther east) to be in the form of some light snow for the I-40 corridor and points north. Some rain could mix in, but generally speaking, the atmosphere looks cold enough for the main precip type to be snow in those areas.

South of I-40, it looks like mainly some light rain with a few intervals of light snow possibly mixing in.

Now, the key work in all of this is 'light.' Some places will not see any precip at all, and in the places that do, it will not be very heavy. I do think it is within the realm of possibility that a few elevated surfaces could get dusted, but ground temps are still pretty warm, so any accumulation potential is limited to those elevated surfaces, and even at that, a dusting.

So, really, not a big deal, but kind of a novelty in that some places could see the first flakes of the season.

Big-time cold....

Here is the big deal....the cold air on the way. While it has been chilly the past couple of days, I am anticipating downright cold air to settle in for next week. I am talking many Piedmont highs shy of 40 for several days next week with lows in the upper teens to lower 20s.

This sustained cold blast will likely give most areas in the region at least 4 days of highs at least 15 degrees below average.....that is quite significant.