THE FAT LADY SINGS...
You may not hear it "clearly" today but the fat lady is tuning up, ready to sing her closing song with unbridled gusto. The fine weather of the past few days has come and is about to go thanks to the arrival of a potent storm system that closes out April like a lion Sunday.
Here's an animation showing the energy phasing over the Great Lakes and exploding into a deep closed upper level vortex. Watch that baby spin up before your eyes pulling a late season chill into the region.
Fortunately the core of the system is far enough away to keep the majority of its significant precipitation just to the east. However, we won't get off entirely free as very cold air aloft creates wind, clouds, and instability showers. The first batch of showers arrived overnight and is already exiting Saturday morning along the initial cold front. The second wave slated for Saturday night and Sunday, is associated with the true cold air which lags about 12 hours behind. Some of these showers could mix up with a bit of wet snow by early Sunday, especially in the north near HWY 20. The 3 day animation into Tuesday morning shows the tight circulation that generates the cold winds and the widely scattered (but light) showers.
WPC precipitation totals have come in like this through Tuesday morning. (Most of it occurs Saturday night/Sunday).
The National Model Blend has a similar look with the higher totals, perhaps 1/4" over the NE half of my area.
The GFS actually gets snow showers south of HWY 20. The most opportune time for flakes is late Saturday night or early Sunday.
As for temperatures, they fall into the 50s Saturday and hold in the low to mid 40s for highs Sunday and Monday. You can already see early Saturday afternoon readings are down 15-20 degrees from where they were Friday.
By Monday morning wind chills will have lowered to the mid to upper 20s in the north thanks to brisk NW winds of 30mph plus. That old fat lady will be singing like a lark then!
There is a chance at some point next week, most likely Wednesday morning that frost or freezing temperatures could return to the area. That's contingent on clear skies and light winds and the potential will be monitored closely in coming days.
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BETTER DAYS AHEAD...
Slowly but surely the upper air low breaks down and inches east allowing temperatures to moderate the middle of next week. However, the process will be slow and NW flow remains intact through next week. This is what the daily temperature departure looks like on the GFS for the next 7 days (Saturday to Saturday, April 29-May 6th).
By the time we reach the period May 6th-12th, CPC has us back in normal temperatures.
The experimental week 3-4 outlook May13th-26th is much more to my liking with much better odds of seeing consistently above normal readings.
The EURO does show the warmth building in its temperature departures for May 12th.
More of a southwesterly flow should finally allow some moisture to get back into the picture around that time. However, up until then the overall pattern looks on the dry side with the EURO control showing 1.5 to 2" rainfall deficits over the next 15 days.
In summation, one could say this is a bad news good news situation with the next 2 weeks ending much better than they start. I'm one of those who likes to get the bad behind me first, taking the early punishment knowing full well there's positives to look forward to. It appears I will get my preference. Have an outstanding weekend and by all means, roll weather...TS
