December 26th, 2024, happy Boxing Day.

 

Daily forecast discussion…

Well Christmas and the first day of Hanukkah was very tranquil. I hope y’all had a wonderful Christmas and start of Hanukkah spending time with family and friends.

Looking at the surface chart we can see high pressure centered north of the St. Lawrence Valley pushing into the Northeast. This is the high pressure that kept the weather so nice. It's going to remain overhead, where it will keep the weather nice from the first day of Kwanzaa into the start of the weekend. The next couple of days will see seasonal to slightly below average temperatures.

The satellite image shows a couple of systems, one is leaving the Pacific Northwest heading into the Rockies, the other is over the Southern Plains. This second one will stay to our west as it moves over the Great Lakes into Canada. This will drag a warm front into the region later on Saturday, so we will see increasing clouds, along with warming temperatures.  With the front there will be isolated to scattered rain showers for many of us. But northern New York State and Northern New England could see some mix of snow/freezing rain, before a change over to rain. Those in Southeast New York State (north and west of NYC), northeast Pennsylvania, into Northwest New Jersey, could be dealing with some freezing rain. This warm front is going to linger overhead on Sunday, the region will have well above average temperatures, that will be keeping the threat for scattered rain showers over the region, I can’t rule out a chance for some mix for parts of the Greens and Whites.

As we get into New Years Eve, another low-pressure system will be approaching, this looks to scoot over the Lower Great Lakes and just to our north, so this will bring rain/mix/and some snow to the region for later Christmas Eve into New Years Day.  For Thursday we will likely be seeing lake effect snow falling downwind of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.  There is a chance for some kind of snowstorm for January 3^rd into the 4th.  But that is going to depend on what the New Years Eve/Day storm does. If it bombs out over the Gulf of Maine, it would suppress any storm trying to come up the Coast, but if it doesn’t get in the way, there is a chance for a Coastal Storm to develop; this is a week away so we will see!

 

I’ve been talking about January turning very cold and stormy. That still looks to be the case. Strong ridging will return to the western US and Canada, with a deep trough over the east US and Canada. There is also going to be a good chance for high latitude blocking up around Greenland. I expect the first half to three quarters of January to be overall quite cold. With the pattern staying active, we can expect the parade of storms to continue moving forward. If these systems can get closer to the Gulf, they could move up the Eastern Seaboard. But the Storms track will depend on the trough placement and axis. But if some of y’all want big nor’easters, the upcoming pattern does look to be supportive to the idea.