Posted 10:00 AM Wednesday, January 3, 2021
Chilly temperatures and clouds this morning but the clouds will thin out some during the afternoon today and allow for intermittent sun. Temperatures will hover at or just below freezing today as high pressure moves across the region.
Skies will clear enough tonight and allow for good ‘radiational cooling’. Temperatures overnight will get down to around 10°/12° by sunrise Thursday morning.
We’ll see a brief warmup on Thursday as clouds increase with a warm front. Temperatures tomorrow will warm to the upper-30s to around 40°. That, coupled with spotty sunshine will melt some of the snow cover.
Rain and snow showers move in Thursday evening and night with a cold front. Temperatures should stay above freezing Thursday night and most of the precipitation associated with this system be rain. However, I can’t rule out some snowflakes mixing in at times.
The cold front crosses east-central Ohio Friday morning and temperatures look to be warm enough to support rain. Falling temperatures in the afternoon will bring a change to snow, but it will be brief as drier air moves in quickly behind the front.
Winds will turn gusty Friday afternoon as temperatures fall into the mid-20s. This will be the start of a very cold period that will stick around through the weekend and much of next week. It will turn cold for sure but we won’t see any record cold. Of more concern will be wind chills. As air temperatures approach zero-degrees it doesn’t take much of a breeze to impact wind chill values.
The worst cold will occur during the Monday through Wednesday time frame. Some moderation looks to occur during the second half of the week but it’s still going to be well below normal for quite some time. The Climate Prediction Center indicates cold temperatures staying through mid-month.
According to model ensembles, we’re looking at a stretch of 8/9 days of below-freezing temperatures. That means temperature may not warm to above freezing until Valentine’s Day. While that sounds impressive, it won’t be close to the 19 consecutive below-freezing days we saw in 2003.
It’s been 2 years since we’ve had temperatures at or below zero. We will likely see some of THE coldest weather we’ve had since the last days of January 2019. The model trend lately has relaxed a bit as far as how cold it might get. It will still get cold, but reaching zero or below has come into question. Don’t get me wrong. It’s still going to turn much colder than we’ve seen so far this winter. It just may not get quite as cold as previously forecasted.
