A Very Nice Tuesday
Temperatures rose slightly overnight across the Finger Lakes, despite the presence of mostly clear skies.
A broad southerly flow is responsible for the warming as an area of low pressure has lifted through the Upper Great Lakes and into Canada.
Warmer air ahead of this system is moving north through the lower Great Lakes, including the Finger Lakes region.
With skies remaining mostly sunny through the morning, temperatures should have little trouble rising through the 40s.
Some patchy clouds will move in for the afternoon, but there should be a good deal of sunshine as well.
Temperatures will be above normal this afternoon with highs topping out in the low 50s.
The south wind will be gusty today though, with peak gusts in the 30-35 mph range.
Cold Front Brings Flurries Back
The warm-up will be short lived. A cold front will move into the Finger Lakes after midnight tonight.
A period of rain will move in along the front and should end as a little bit of snow around sunrise Wednesday.
No more than a light dusting of snow is expected.
The widespread precipitation will head east early in the morning, leaving a few scattered flurries lingering across the Finger Lakes throughout the remainder of Wednesday.
Temperatures Wednesday will be in the mid 30s during the morning, but will slowly slide back into the low 30s by the late morning and to near 30 degrees by the mid afternoon.
Northwest winds will be a bit gusty Wednesday afternoon.
Thanksgiving Day should generally be dry, but a few additional light flurries will be possible. Temperatures will top out in the upper 30s.
Holiday Weekend Weather
Early bird shoppers on Black Friday will be met with partly cloudy skies and temperatures in the general vicinity of 30 degrees.
As the sun rises Friday, cloud cover should decrease and southerly winds will once again take hold.
This should push temperatures back into the upper 40s Friday afternoon.
Saturday will be warmer yet, with highs in the low 50s. A few scattered rain showers are likely, however.
Sunday will turn much colder again, with highs in the 30s with scattered lake effect snow showers.
At this time, none of the lake effect looks too heavy, but some squalls southeast of the Great Lakes could make travel between Cleveland and Jamestown, between Buffalo and Rochester, and between Syracuse and Utica a bit sloppy.
More on that as we get closer to the weekend.
Chey
Drew, can you tell me where *other* weather reporters get their forecast information? Do most base them on the European Ensembles you referred to in your post about weather hype? And do *they* choose the most sensational of those models? Thanks in advance for your clarification!
Meteorologist Drew Montreuil
Great question with a variety of answers.
Many forecasters use the American model called the GFS. It is freely available (the Euro is not) and easy to access. It is an OK model but I honestly rarely consider it, especially in the longer term.
Some weather services and reporters literally take the raw GFS data and display it as a “forecast”. Others do intentionally grab the more extreme scenarios and run with it, though that is more for armchair meteorologists and non-professionals (I hope). Many just don’t have the time, desire, and/or knowledge to properly analyze and interpret model data within the frame of the science behind the weather.
Especially for a unique region like ours…just taking model data and presenting it as a forecast is not going to result in a very reliable product.
Tuesday will be another solid travel day ahead of Thanksgiving – FingerLakes1.com
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