Unseasonably warm weather will continue for the next several days as a huge ridge of high pressure remains over the Southeast and mid-Atlantic. Today through Friday sees sunshine and above normal temperatures with cool nights. It’s a pretty simple forecast.
Enjoy the summer-like weather while you can because BIG changes are in store beginning this weekend. A strong cold front will move through the region late Saturday night and stall just to our east. Clouds increase during the day on Saturday and temperatures will be several degrees cooler than this week. Sunday sees much colder air begin to filter into the region behind the front. Precipitation chances are limited though as the front itself won’t have a ton of moisture associated with it.
Here’s where things get interesting. Tropical Storm Sandy will move across the Bahamas and up the southeastern US coast over the weekend. Depending on how far to the west it tracks, it could interact with the cold front and transport moisture inland which would bring about the possibility of snow for locations in northern West Virginia and western Maryland. The Euro model shows this happening while the GFS model has the storm turning to the northeast and staying well offshore.
If it does follow the Euro model’s depiction, snowfall totals would be fairly significant, especially for this time of year. However, confidence in this happening is lessening with each model run. Nonetheless, it’s exciting to talk about! Monday and Tuesday will be much colder either way and this week will seem like a distant memory.