January Thaws

Thursday 10 a.m.

Cold air has settled into the Northeast, and single-digit temperatures were common from the middle of Pennsylvania to much of New England this morning. At Saranac Lake, N.Y., the temperature dropped to 24 degrees below zero! Tomorrow will not be as cold as today in most of the that area, but it will be moderately cold for the weekend and Monday from the Great Lakes through most of the Northeast.

Next week, it appears we will head into a much more variable setup that averages warmer than this week. THE January Thaw typically occurs late in the month when there is one. However, I guess any time it warms up in January after a cold shot could be called a January thaw.

There is a disturbance causing some snow and ice in western Texas today. (It was snowing in El Paso at midmorning.) The computer models have consistently shown this as a weak feature when it moves through the Northeast Saturday night. I am concerned it may be a little stronger than shown on this video:

This forecast map for Saturday shows a setup somewhat similar to what we had last night. There was a bubble of high pressure over eastern Canada, with a larger high farther south (this high will be stronger Saturday than it is today). This arrangement would favor very cold air over central and northern New England and northern New York state on Saturday.