What will the weather pattern look like for the week of Thanksgiving?

AccuWeather

Stormy weather could mark Thanksgiving week on key travel days this year, as AccuWeather's Geoff Cornish explains in this long-range forecast.

Transcript

00:00Well, we want to take a look at, with our forecast feed, the extended forecast.

00:04We're taking a deeper dive into Thanksgiving week.

00:07I know it's still a couple of weeks away, it'll be here a little more than two weeks

00:11from now.

00:12We'll be celebrating Thanksgiving, hope you have some plans, at least at some point within

00:16a few days of the holiday, but we are looking to an impactful time weather-wise as well.

00:22And the day-to-day specifics are tricky this far out, but we can get a better handle as

00:27to the major pattern overall and how that could impact travel.

00:30So let's take a look at the big headlines here for Thanksgiving week travel.

00:35And overall, we're looking at a stormier pattern from the central into the eastern U.S.

00:40And this is going to impact the areas even in the southwestern part of the nation early

00:43in the week.

00:44There will be some potential for some snow on the northern fringe of the storm track and

00:49certainly a thunderstorm threat as well on the southern part of the storm track where

00:54there will be a little more warmth, a little more instability, and the gulf is never far

00:58away when you have flow from the south.

01:00So let's take a look at some models and we'll kind of summarize this with the big picture.

01:05As we take you out moving forward through this weekend, by the way, there's the deep trough

01:10that's been lifting away from the eastern U.S.

01:13We're looking at the flow about 20,000 feet up into the atmosphere.

01:17And the bright colors are areas of vorticity, which is basically a measure of spin.

01:22It's a reference to spin.

01:24And if we think of that in terms of lift in the atmosphere, if you have bright colors coming

01:27toward you, you're going to be in a posture of cloud production, rain, and snow production.

01:33So here we go into the weekend leading up to Thanksgiving, Saturday the 22nd.

01:37We're going to have a fast-moving system that will be scooting through the northeast,

01:42fast-moving front.

01:43It is tilted from southwest to northeast, so it probably wouldn't be a terribly impactful

01:47event, but a fast mover.

01:49But then we have also a fairly sizable dip in the jet stream here, and you can see an

01:55area of lower pressure, an extra pouch in the steering flow down into the southwest.

02:00So as we get into the early part of Thanksgiving week, you can see a pretty pronounced dip in

02:06the jet stream traversing the nation from the southwest by Monday, Monday nights in the

02:10plains by Tuesday into Wednesday.

02:13Huge travel day the day before Thanksgiving.

02:15There it is, big dip in the jet stream, but again, there's a little bit of flabbiness between

02:20the interior, the core of this storm system here, that area of low pressure aloft, and

02:26then another zone here where there's a pretty tight gradient with the steering flow down here

02:32in the southeast.

02:33So this would be a chilly pattern with an area of rain, snow, and some thunderstorms, thunderstorms

02:38south.

02:39And one other depiction of this, so that was the GFS model.

02:43Here's the European, Saturday, similar story, Saturday, Sunday, crossing the central U.S.,

02:49moving into Monday.

02:50It's a little faster moving, comparing Monday evening of Thanksgiving week with the European

02:56model and with the GFS.

02:58You'll notice the GFS is still back.

02:59It's about a day separated.

03:01The core of the trough, the base of the trough runs from Wisconsin down into Texas.

03:05Meanwhile, in the world of the European model, it runs from New York down into Virginia.

03:11So again, we've got some questions.

03:13There are some specifics that have yet to be determined, but there's going to be a trough

03:17that crosses, maybe two troughs that move from the central U.S. into the eastern U.S.,

03:22and you can see how that may play out here at the surface with rain and snow.

03:26We're going to pick this up here on Saturday with the first front that I pointed out in

03:31the GFS, that fast mover, kind of a low impact event.

03:34But then this would be a thunderstorm producer in the south on Monday into Tuesday of Thanksgiving

03:39week.

03:40And behind that, a strong cold front will lead to a push of colder air, and that would

03:45lead to lake effect snow into Thanksgiving.

03:48Here's the European model.

03:49And again, this plays out very differently with this kind of fractured in two separate storm

03:53systems.

03:54But we're going to keep an eye out for the first system to move east, and then more of

03:58a delay before the second storm would actually bring some snow to the plains.

04:02So again, a lot of different moving parts.

04:04But to summarize this, generally, west to the northeast, a series of storms bringing travel

04:10trouble.

04:11And we'll get more specific in the days to come.

04:13We'll get more specific in the days to come.

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