A cold front on Thanksgiving Day will be the leading edge of the strongest cold outbreak since January.
A front will bring widespread rainfall to the region beginning overnight Wednesday and lasting into Thanksgiving Day. Earlier in the week it appeared rainfall totals would run well over an inch, but the latest modeling shows less moisture with the front. Below shows simulated radar from 10 p.m. Wednesday night through 7 p.m. Thanksgiving Day. You can see widespread light to moderate rainfall overnight with drying trend after 11 a.m. on Thanksgiving. By late afternoon some sun could even peek out as a strong front pushes through.
Winds will pick up from the northwest through the afternoon. They won’t be as gusty as we saw behind the last front but winds of 10-20 m.p.h. are expected through early Friday morning.
High temperatures on Thanksgiving Day will run in the low-60s and likely occur around lunchtime. We won’t see a huge drop-off in temperature for most of the region but areas to the north/west of the higher elevations will see temperatures fall through the afternoon. Temperatures will really drop off overnight with low/mid-30s expected region-wide.
This will just be the beginning of a much colder airmass that will gradually build in through early next week. High temps on Friday will run only around 50º. Overnight Friday low temperatures will drop into the mid/upper-20s region-wide with some low-20s expected in the mountains. High temps will continue to drop 2-3 degrees each day Saturday through Tuesday when the core of the cold air is overhead. The image below shows forecast temperatures around 20 degrees below average by Tuesday morning.
Widespread low/mid-20s are looking likely by this point and the higher elevations should have no problem dropping into the teens. Single digits are possible further north over the North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia mountains.
Stay tuned for the latest on this cold outbreak. The next couple days will be a great time to double check all exposed pipes and get them covered!
