Twas The Night Before Christmas
Tis the night before Christmas and all through the region, not much is stirring except for a few flurries on Cape Cod. An upper level disturbance is tracking across the area and following its passage, another chunk of chilly air will arrive from the northwest. The sky will clear before dawn and the temperatures will drop into the teens to lower 20s. Your Christmas Day will be filled with sunshine but it will be cold with highs only in the lower to middle 20s. The cold wind of 10-20 mph during the morning will make it feel like the single numbers. Following the cold Christmas Day, the temperatures may fall only slightly tomorrow evening before stalling then rising a bit before dawn. A weak weather maker approaching from the west will create mostly cloudy conditions with snow showers breaking out on Thursday. It will likely become mild enough to support rain showers over southeastern MA and possibly up close to the Boston area in the afternoon. This feature will shift offshore Thursday night with a ridge of high pressure building in on Friday to produce mainly sunny weather with highs in the middle to upper 30s. The ridge will shift offshore and more of a southwesterly breeze will pump in milder weather as the weekend unfolds. Plan on sunny to partly cloudy conditions with highs in the lower 40s on Saturday and upper 40s on Sunday.
Looking ahead, a cold front will pass through late Sunday so colder air will rush in on Monday with some sunshine and highs in the lower to middle 30s. On New Year's Eve day, the cold air will become established with highs in the lower to middle 20s with a drop into the teens to near 10 degrees as we ring in the new year of 2014. Beyond that, there is uncertainty pertaining to a potential developing storm in the Northeast with frigid air pouring out of Canada and the Great Lakes. It bears watching because we could get either or both plowable snow followed by a nasty arctic blast sometime during the first 2 0r 3 days of January.
Danielle Niles will update the forecast in the morning and Eric Fisher will follow later in the day.
From all of us in the WBZ Weather Center, we wish you a MERRY CHRISTMAS!
