BLOG: Comfortable December

The weekend will conclude on a chilly note with temperatures several degrees below average over the Northeast. The cold trough responsible for the colder weather will quickly head eastward as we head through the night with warmer air poised to move in for Monday. Sunshine Sunday will give way to some cloudiness Monday afternoon as a cold front approaches from the north. Highs on Monday ahead of the front will be a good 10 degrees warmer than Sunday, but these numbers will get trimmed a bit for Tuesday as the cold front sinks southward. Not a lot of moisture will accompany this frontal passage... really nothing more than a few sprinkles with this "event." In any case clouds will linger for Tuesday as the front stalls out along the Mason-Dixon line and a warm, southerly flow in the mid-levels overrides this boundary.

This sets the stage Wednesday for more warmth (in a relative sense) as a storm system in the Plains heads toward the Great Lakes and the stalled boundary pushes northward as a warm front. With this frontal passage will come another round of showers late Tuesday night into Wednesday morning with more rainfall Wednesday afternoon as a second push of warm advection arrives. Clearly an adjustment in the speed of the Plains system will dictate the exact timing of this evolution, but this seems to be a decent play at this point.