While tonight should be another chilly night across central New York. While temperatures themselves won’t be as low as last night, there will be a bit more breeze which does mean lower wind chills. There are wind chill advisories up north and east of Syracuse where wind chills tonight could get down to -20.
Although the air over us is still rather dry, west-northwest winds aloft coming over the relatively warm lake is causing the air to be modified creating some lake effect clouds and even flurries. This will be the case for areas southeast of the lake through the evening but as winds become lighter overnight, any lake effect will migrate back closer to the lake shore. This will allow more breaks in the clouds over most of central New York overnight and temperatures to drop below zero over most of the region. Of course, if the winds stay up and the clouds remain stubborn, we’ll end up warmer than what we have in the forecast.
By Friday, two areas of low pressure, one to our south and one farther north, will move east. The southern system and the one that has more moisture, looks to stay south of the region while the northern system, one with less moisture, looks to impact the region. It looks like we should see some light snow moving into central New York from mid afternoon on. Since this northern system has a limited amount of moisture, we feel any accumulation of snow from mid afternoon through the evening will be light, on the order of a couple inches or less.
With both of these areas of low pressure moving east, the arctic air will be reinforced for the start of the weekend. There should be some lake effect snow around for Saturday with an additional accumulation possible. This will be followed by a fairly large area of high pressure building in for Saturday night and Sunday. The drier air mass associated with this high will clear us out nicely Saturday night so we potentially could be below zero to start Sunday. However, the rest of Sunday should nice with plenty of sun and light winds. That will make our high in the low 20s seem warmer.
By early next week the arctic air will lift back into Canada and our temperatures will have a chance to moderate, if only temporarily. In fact, the arrival of some snow Monday will signal the likely arrival of much warmer air that’s slated to move in Tuesday and Wednesday of next week.
