Thanksgiving Weekend Intrigue

Wednesday 9 a.m.

With a high pressure area in charge and another one likely to take over later this weekend into the start of the weekend, dry and moderately chilly weather will be the rule across most of the Great Lakes and Northeast regions.

Toward the end of the week, a low pressure area will become organized east of the Carolinas. The computer models are not in unison on this, but they suggest an increasing chance of rain and/or drizzle with strengthening northeast winds later in the weekend and early next week. And, we will have to watch the temperatures carefully, because it would not take too much of a change to get some snow with that system.

Later next week and during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, we see a wide range in possibilities expressed by the computer models. Here are two maps from models that were run last evening. The GFS (first map) suggests very mild weather from the Midwest to the Middle Atlantic states. However, the ECMWF (European) makes it look blustery and cold across the Great Lakes with an outbreak of lake-effect snow flurries and squalls. It appears much of the difference in solutions is created by the handling of a storm east of New England. The ECMWF generates a powerful storm, which in turn pulls a lot of cold air southward.