00:00Well, here on the forecast feed, we are going to be climbing our way out of the Arctic and
00:04stepping into a more temperate, even milder weather pattern later this week in parts of
00:11the plains and the northeast as well.
00:13It's been a long time coming.
00:14We've had it remarkably cold, colder than the historical average start to the cold season
00:20here, late November and into early December, the first half of December.
00:24Some of us are running 7, 8, 10, 12 degrees below the historical average over two weeks.
00:31Pretty impressive.
00:32And we've gotten into snow even for I-95 now since the weekend has moved through.
00:38Now let's take a look at what's going on with our snow cover right now.
00:41And you can see that most of us are covered in snow in the north central, the Midwest,
00:44the Ohio Valley and the northeast as well.
00:47We've had two previous storm systems track through this area.
00:51So that snow has melded away over northern North Carolina and into southeastern parts
00:55of Virginia.
00:56That was one week ago we saw some of that.
00:59And then a week and a half ago we saw some of that there in areas like Norfolk and Virginia
01:02Beach.
01:03But we have not seen much in the west.
01:05And you can see a lot of the Cascades and the Sierra here.
01:09A little snow starved.
01:11We've had plenty of moisture in the northwest.
01:13But the snow levels have been so high that it was mainly rain in recent days and weeks.
01:17But we're going to get into a colder pattern eventually on the backside of this Pacific
01:21Northwest storm system that will bring the snow levels down below 4,000 feet by midweek.
01:26That'll bring more snow to the Cascades.
01:29Meanwhile, we need to wait.
01:30Maybe later next week, around Christmas, we might see the pattern buckle southward enough
01:36for more of the Sierra to get back into snow.
01:38We had a good start in the Sierra.
01:39But then things got very quiet for us.
01:41A quick checkup on some cities in the Midwest and the northeast here where we've been dealing
01:45with some pretty good snow.
01:46We had a great start to the snow season in South Bend, Indiana.
01:50We're already over half of your annual snow total there on average.
01:55Chicago, well above average.
01:56Typically, we're at 5.1 by now.
01:58We're at 17 inches.
02:00Richmond, Virginia, you've had six inches of snow a week, week and a half ago.
02:04Pretty impressive.
02:05Typically, by now, we're still under an inch.
02:07Philadelphia finally got on the board in a pretty good way.
02:09We average 1.4 inches by now.
02:12We're at 4.2 after the weekend event in the city at the airport.
02:15New York City, Central Park.
02:17We've been showing you some of the footage there.
02:18You can see that on AccuWeather.com.
02:20And we're a little above average after the weekend snow as well.
02:23So where do we go from here?
02:24We're going to be dealing with a bit of a pattern change.
02:28And overall, you can see we've had most of the past two weeks, we've had a deep trough in
02:34the northeast, and at times over the Midwest as well.
02:37That is lifting away.
02:39Take a look at where we go here.
02:41You can see there is going to be kind of a muted trough that just scoots through.
02:44But behind that, you can see a little hint, a little bit of a ridginess there across the
02:50Midwest for Wednesday night and Thursday.
02:51And then here we get into a trough that comes in across the western part of the plains.
02:56But in advance of that, while there will be some cold air behind that system, look at
03:00this.
03:01We've got warm flow, relatively warm flow from the southwest, just a wash across the eastern
03:06U.S.
03:07And that's going to bring us our first meaningful warm-up, some of you into the 40s, some near
03:13I-95, into the 50s, also some west of the mountains into the 50s for the first time since
03:17November.
03:18It's going to be nice.
03:20Now it'll come with some rain.
03:22You can see the precipitation type here.
03:24We're looking at the system coming in, and you can see a lot of green on the map there.
03:28We're looking at rain building in.
03:29Look at that flow near the surface coming up out of the south, southwest.
03:33That's warmer flow.
03:34It won't last long.
03:35There's a strong cold front associated with this, but the nature of the cold that follows
03:40this front is going to be short-lived, and we're going to be going through a lot more
03:45back-and-forth transitions instead of being locked into the deep freeze, which has been
03:49our problem lately.
03:51So again, we're going to deal with some rain.
03:54And keep in mind, the snow that you see here, that's a little bit the way the models depict
04:00things.
04:01It's a six-hour accumulation window, and it applies the temperature at the end of those six
04:05hours to the precip type.
04:07So a lot of that blue would really be rain ending as a little bit of snow.
04:11So we're not looking at a big snowstorm.
04:13It's mainly rain ending as a little bit of snow.
04:15And I think the color coding with the European model depicts this a bit better, a little
04:19bit more honestly there, with rain ending with just a little bit of snow.
04:24Now, behind that, we're going to see a lot more back-and-forth weather.
04:29So overall, as we look at the warm-up for the weekend, or the warm-up for Wednesday, I
04:34should say, a lot of 40s and 50s down into the area around I-20.
04:39We're going to be dealing with 60s.
04:41But you'll notice, when we get a little more specific with the way we drew this here, our
04:45forecast department, they intentionally kind of kept some of this area just east of the
04:49mountains out of the orange for Thursday.
04:52And it's still going to be a little cold.
04:53Cold air is dense.
04:55It hugs the floor of the valley.
04:57And warm air often rides over top of that because cold air is so dense.
05:02So it's going to take a little bit of time to erode the cold away from some of those areas
05:06where we're intentionally not shading it orange.
05:08It will be milder and mild enough for rain.
05:11This aligns with the forecast I was showing you there with the computer models for Thursday's
05:15storm system.
05:16And yes, there will be some cold air that follows, but it's going to be a little more
05:19transient.
05:20It won't last nearly as long.
05:22And again, if you haven't been washing your car, you leave it outside, maybe you're going
05:27to get a little bit of a natural bath there on Thursday.
05:29But the experts say it's always better to really give it a good wash, get underneath the
05:36chassis and so forth.
05:37So again, a little bit of rain.
05:38And then as we take you farther in time, let's go to Christmas week.
05:42You can see we're going to have a little weak trough over the region in the northeast.
05:46The Midwest on Sunday.
05:47So a little chillier for a time, not the deep trough that we had.
05:50And then what strikes me is this Pacific west to east flow.
05:55That type of weather pattern this time of the year brings generally moderate, fairly mild,
06:00fairly relatively warm weather.
06:02It just it keeps the Arctic air bottled up to the north, way to the north.
06:06So again, with flow that's so flat west to east, we won't get into much cold.
06:11Late Christmas week, maybe the day after, there's a trough that returns.
06:15And that could come with maybe some icy trouble or snow, ice and rain mix, depending on where
06:22you are in elevation here on Friday.
06:25You can see the pink there.
06:26The European is hinting at a bit of an icy mess on Christmas Day.
06:30So again, we're going to have to get more specific with time.
06:33We've got some time to work out the details.
06:35Our best forecast at this point is for more rain and snow in the northwest on Christmas
06:39Day, rain for many of us, and also we'll be dealing with potential for some ice and snow
06:45near and north of Interstate 80.
06:47That is your forecast feed.
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