Saturday, December 21, 2013

Wet, Warm Weather Waiting in the Wings

Rain, rain, go away; come again...in May.

The chances of us having white stuff on the ground for December 25th are going to decrease markedly after the drenching we will experience this evening (Saturday) and during the day on Sunday.

Here's the radar picture as of 8 AM Saturday:


The track of this rain is in an east-northeast direction, which means it will be wet in the Berkshires for most of the day and tomorrow, but we think the heaviest rains will fall to our north. Some computer models are calling for close to 3" of rain. If this rain could be snow, we'd be looking at over 2 feet in the Adirondacks. But don't forget that it's exceedingly warm for this time of year, which is driving the liquid volume up (warmer air = moist; colder air = dry, which explains why your hands, lips, and face feel chapped all winter).

As for timing...it looks like the rain will start before noon on Saturday and continue off and on throughout the day. Later tonight we'll see it become steadier, and then tomorrow you will wake up to more rain. Yay. The rain should end sometime in the late afternoon on Sunday. High temps will be in the mid 50s both days, which will make this storm feel like an April one instead of a first-day-of-winter one.

Winter returns on Tuesday. We'll see temperatures fall gradually starting Sunday night with mid 40s on Monday and then mid 20s for highs on Christmas Eve. Christmas is looking dry with some sun and temps seasonably in the 20s.

The next time we will see snow is possibly on Thursday night or Friday. A couple of our sources are suggesting a very small Alberta Clipper could impact our area Thursday night and/or another small low pressure system could give us a brief shot of snow on Friday. These are very tenuous predictions right now but it's all we've got right now so we'll hope for the best.

Don't let the rain dampen your holiday spirit! And happy vacation to those who are now on it.

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