Our next weather maker is an arctic cold front that will move from the Great Lakes through central New York Thursday morning. As the front moves through, there will be a limited amount of lake effect snow. First, the snow will be east of Lake Ontario, then it will move south through Syracuse during the first part of the day. We say ‘limited’ because the winds will shift pretty quickly during the morning and the air over us will be drying out. This will keep accumulations to a minimum. Most areas will see an inch or less of new snow with several inches possible over the Tug Hill.
Colder air will filter in behind the cold front so our temperatures for the end of the week will be a bit below normal for mid January. However, the first batch of arctic air won’t last long. By Friday afternoon, the arctic air will be pulling out of Central New York. Winds turning into the southwest by Saturday will mean even milder air to star the weekend. We could be near 40 degrees to start the weekend.
Even while we are briefly warming, a new surge of arctic air will be pooling over southern Canada early in the weekend and will dive southeast which means a change in our weather before the end of the weekend. That change should come on Sunday as low pressure and a second arctic cold front close in on the region. All signs still point to Sunday as our day of transition to bitterly cold air (the coldest of the season) that may be with us much of next week. This change to colder weather will also be accompanied by very strong winds. Finally, because of the depth of the cold air headed this way, we’ll also need to consider the prospect for lake effect snow next week. That is still way out in time and we’ll need to get closer to next week before we can pinpoint wind directions and the placement of any lake snows. We’ll certainly keep you posted.
