Happy Thanksgiving

And with those well wishes to y'all and your families, in the world of wx, this is the unofficial start to the winter season.  This weekend, you know that the hounds of winter are getting ready to be unleashed as a strong cold front will push through ushering in much colder and blustery conditions for the weekend.  Note how warm it was yesterday afternoon in terms of actual high temps...

60˚F for a max in NYC is an awfully nice Thanksgiving Eve!  Look at FL!  70˚F across the state!  Fairly uniform air mass...don't cha think?  And for Turkey day, the temps will once again be quite mild.  In the mid section of the country, look at how "warm" it is in the overnight...map valid at 3 am!  We are cold here in the northeast thanks to high pressure hanging tough, clear skies, calm winds, and dry air!  All of this makes for great radiational cooling!

Come this afternoon, take a look at the temps in terms of their forecasted maxes this pm!  You can clearly see the progged cold front lying from Lake Superior SW towards CO.

I like to look at the 850 mb temps to see the cold air progress as there is little friction 1 mile up; a nice level to note movement of air masses and their associated physical properties...Here is the 850s for Friday at kickoff for Friday night lights as per the NAM...the winds will be kicking as well and the temps will be falling rapidly by the end of the evening!

In fact, the air means business.  I do believe from the actual O Canadian obs, it is being underdone on the modeling!  I truly think Sunday will be quite cold!  Here is the "official" max temp prog from HPC...personally, KMDT will not make it into the 40s...let's go for a Sunday max of only 38˚F!  January cold!

But the truly interesting wx will be evolving next week when a major storm will affect the eastern part of the US.  It's too early to forecast with any certainty, but those of you who have been monitoring my Twitter feed know that I have been hinting at a winter wx event for next week.  You will know its essentially the winter season this weekend...complete with Lake Effect in the snow belts of PA!  It will not be one of those crippling Lake Effects; however, I once again believe this model is underdone as it can't see the cold for what its properties are...

And by the middle of next week, well...this map suggests storminess in the eastern US...but the exact track and evolution of the storm is still "up in the air" so to speak!

The 500 mb suggests an active wx system; but this Euro 850 mb temp anomaly map almost guarantees a cold last week of November into 1st week of December.  This is the Euro ensembles and they are quite cold (-15˚-20˚F) for the Mid-Atlantic suggesting temps to remain in the 30s for most of the maxes!  Again, January cold!  Now we head into that time of year where 9.5 hours of sunlight is a good day and when the temps get up into the 50s...well...that's a bonus!  It does appear that December will be turning colder and stormier than November has been...although at KMDT, we did have only 4 days to this point that have been above normal temps!  It's been cold and dry with less than 1" of rain in our area to this point!  That was quite a cold spell at the beginning of the month...and will be to end the month!

OK...I'm done rambling...I hope all reading this have a truly wonderful Thanksgiving holiday and enjoy the friends and family that go along with the holiday celebrations!  I found this card quite funny; especially following our Presidential campaign which we all just suffered through!

Enjoy the holiday!

Smitty

AA:  Mild Thanksgiving; then a strong front to push through for the weekend.  Continued cold and potentially stormy for next week...but to be sure, quite cold by the end of the week!  Happy Thanksgiving my friend and enjoy your family!  Don't blink, they grow up fast!  It's nice not to have Wrestling during this time...isn't it?