The lake-effect machine appears to finally be dissipating this morning after from intense snow yesterday, as NNW winds direct what few showers (mostly from Lake Huron) remain toward Ohio. High pressure will move in from the northwest to give us cold but partly sunny weather for most of the next two days. On Thursday, however, moisture from the Gulf of Mexico (a Miller Type A cyclone, for you weather geeks out there) will combine with an Alberta Clipper (a low-pressure system from Canada) to bring significant synoptic scale snow for New Year’s Eve.

Tuesday: Partly sunny, very cold. Afternoon highs in the low to mid-teens.

Wednesday: Lows early Wednesday in the upper single digits. Partly sunny, more seasonable. Afternoon highs in the upper 20s to low 30s.

Thursday: Lows early Thursday in the mid-20s. Snow beginning in the evening. Highs in the low-to-mid-30s.

New Year’s Eve forecast: Snow, temperatures in the upper 20s.

Friday and beyond: Both the GFS and NAM are predicting the main body of precipitation to swing out to our east on Friday. However, the interesting part comes on Saturday. The GFS is predicting the jet stream to shift in the opposite direction for the weekend. I don’t have enough data from the ECMWF to verify this but from the 500-mb charts appear to have a similar steering pattern with a cutoff low over the Northeastern U.S. If that happens, there’s going to be a lot of wraparound snowfall, and significantly colder temperatures, sticking around for several days.

Average temperature for New Year’s is 30.

More in the weekend outlook on Friday.

~JMF