Significant warm up underway for the Finger Lakes

Temperatures will warm significantly Wednesday and Thursday, with 50s likely.

Quiet Weather Wednesday

The icy, windy, wild weather from Tuesday has departed the Finger Lakes. That weather was the price we had to pay to get to today.

Clear skies this morning will gradually cloud over during the afternoon, but precipitation, which will be just plain rain, will hold off until the evening hours.

Temperatures early this morning range from the mid 30s to the low 40s. Everyone should see highs will into the 40s today, and a few places may even flirt with 50 degrees.

Please be advised that some roads will remain slick this morning, especially for those areas still stuck in the mid 30s.

The howling winds of yesterday have gone too, with much lighter breezes today.

Rainy Wednesday Night and Thursday

Precipitation will move back into the Finger Lakes from the south tonight. Look for rain to enter the Southern Tier around 9 pm tonight before overspreading the Finger Lakes by 10 or 11 pm.

This first batch of rain will last a couple of hours before tapering off to scattered rain showers. These scattered showers will persist through Thursday morning.

Temperatures will fall back to around 40 degrees Wednesday night but will start to rise again over the western Finger Lakes. These areas may see temperatures back near 50 degrees by dawn, while the warmer air will be slower to arrive further east.

A slow moving cold front will approach on Thursday. Warm air ahead of the front will push most of the Finger Lakes into the low and mid 50s by the early afternoon.

Widespread rain will move back in by midday and will continue until the front passes later in the afternoon. Temperatures will quickly fall back towards the 30s, ending this warm up.

Winds will pick up again a bit on Thursday, with some gusts over 30 mph. They should not be as ferocious as last night, however.

Extended Thaw?

Looking out a bit longer in the forecast, there does not seem to be much winter weather in store for the Finger Lakes over the next couple of week. While the day to day details are of course sketchy at best and completely unknown at worse, the general pattern is looking quite tame.

The general storm track will continue to take systems into the Great Lakes, keeping the Finger Lakes on the warm, wetter side of the weather. The overall pattern also looks less stormy, so there may be fewer opportunities for one of these systems to spread wintry weather into the area.

Temperatures generally do not look significantly warm, but there is a noticeable lack of significant cold as well. This should even keep the lake effect snow machines at bay.

Those looking for winter will undoubtedly not be happy about this, but there is still plenty of winter to go and the pattern very well may turn cold and snowy once again after this extended January Thaw.

Save