The storm system and cold front that caused windy, rainy and mild weather along the East Coast yesterday has moved offshore and to the north. Colder, drier air has streamed in and will now be in charge at least well into next week. While skies cleared and the day is sunny from Boston to Washington, D.C., snow showers are common in the mountains. Lake-effect snow fell at 2-3 inches per hour just south of Buffalo last night. There was a tractor trailer accident on the New York Thruway, and traffic then became backed up for miles. People were still stranded in their vehicles 11 hours after the accident occurred. The snow band affected Buffalo proper overnight, and contained thunderstorms as well as the blinding snow. The band shifted south before daybreak, but has since returned northward. The winds are likely to become more northwesterly across that area from tomorrow through the weekend, so at least Buffalo should avoid more heavy snow. Syracuse, Rochester and Cleveland may have a different story.

An Alberta clipper seems likely to drop several inches of snow in the Chicago area tomorrow night and Saturday morning, then affect southern Virginia and North Carolina. If that idea works out, areas from Washington, D.C. northeastward will not get the snow. A separate storm forming off the northern New England coast could cause snow in Maine, and then other places in northern and central New England later in the weekend. With a large storm aloft taking shape over the Northeast at the end of the weekend and early next week, it will certainly be cold, and some of the moisture from the Maritimes and Maine could wrap all the way around the vortex to cause increased snow shower activity downwind from the Great Lakes into the mountains. It could be the kind of setup in which some of the snow showers make it to the I95 corridor. The wind will increase between Sunday and Monday, and there's more about that after this video.

We'll certainly be in winter's kingdom next week. It will be a time when cold and wind are constant companions; times when barren tree limbs snap brittlely in the unforgiving blusters of winter's dim domain... the cold nights ahead of us when the melancholy sliver of the moon stands silent sentinel over the frozen ground.

Icy needles of wind will maraud through the Midwest, whistling through Wisconsin, irritating Illinois, icing Iowa & mesmerizing Minnesota and Michigan. Then, the cold will overtake and penetrate Pennsylvania, nip New Jersey, cool Connecticut, rush through Rhode Island, march through Massachusetts, dash through Delaware & torque thru New York (not to mention vaulting into Vermont, turning temperatures negative in New Hampshire, and misusing Maine).

As we feel the chill driving us to December's dim dungeon, our thoughts might wander to spring. One day, some day, the sun will coax us back toward milder times. One day, some day, the cautious crocus and daring daffodil will show their bright flowers to the first tender warm breezes. But those times will seem all too remote and inaccessible for the next week, with mornings for the mittens and scarves, parkas and hoods, a wintry wake-up at the gates to winter's warehouse of cold and bluster.

We only now are reaching the shores of the great gulf of winter, but its uncharted waters of cold waves loom larger now, the ice water plenty deep. We'll be in the midst of a classic early season cold period, when face-freezing winds run rampant across the winterscape as the sun is just a feeble bystander an eternity away.

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