It’s a rare set of circumstances in New England when Thanksgiving week rolls around and no storms are in sight in the days leading up to and through Thursday.
It’s even rarer for that to be the case nationwide, without any travel issues due to the predicted weather – but that’s exactly our setup this week.
A pause in what has been a recent parade of disturbances overlapping the jet stream winds that drive storms aloft over the past week will also cause a pause between storms. The next sign of a storm won’t emerge until a few showers around Dallas on Wednesday turn into an expanding rain shield from Houston to Memphis and into St. Louis on Thanksgiving Day.
Here at home in New England, the calm weather begins with the cold. After Monday morning, single-digit wind chill readings and teens rebounded into the 20s and around 30 on Monday afternoon, with actual high temperatures only near 40.
Monday evening will be cold, but not as cold as its predecessor. Expect lows in the 20s and 30s mostly and a lighter breeze. Tuesday brings noticeably lighter wind and afternoon temperatures reaching 45-50 degrees in abundant sunshine for a significant improvement in body feel from Monday. Northern New England will be slightly colder in the days ahead, but that bodes well for ski areas, where snowmaking operations will continue at full blast in the days leading up to the holidays.
As the new, developing storm approaches on Friday, milder air will flow north with it, pushing temperatures into the 50s for most of southern New England, with rain showers expected arrive Friday afternoon and last at least Saturday morning. Meanwhile, the mountains in the north of the country are likely to start with a few centimeters of snow, but can inevitably change to rain by Saturday, although rain amounts at this stage may be limited.
Colder air returns to at least bring snow overnight Saturday night into next week, while southern New England finds a break from below-freezing temperatures for a few days Thursday through Sunday. . All the while, the moon will align for relatively high tide levels Thursday through Saturday, which means our coasts will either see splashes of levees or perhaps pockets of minor coastal flooding in places typically vulnerable.
At this point, our proprietary 10-day forecast for the first alert shows temperatures near or warmer than normal through early December, although we are seeing signals of a return to colder air at from December 3.
