Briefly Colder...
Last night around 2AM, the temp was close to 60 in many towns...truly remarkable...it's weather like that which has boosted December 2011 close to the all-time warmest Decembers on record. With that said, a shot of Winter cold has been surging in on blustery NW winds all day long. In fact, some of the wind this afternoon was stronger than the wind last night but none of the gusts topped the gusts atop Blue Hill last night that touched a hurricane force of 78mph! The cold will be accompanied by wind too so windchills overnight may slip down close to zero in spots.
Tomorrow will be a quiet and cold winter day...lots of sun though and temps around 34. The cold will be fairly short lived as warm air will move back into New England with a clipper system slides by just north of us. Clipper systems are moisture starved but there will still be some rain and snow showers and maybe even a steadier period of both Late Friday through Saturday morning but accumulation will be confined to the Mountains of Northern New England. Dry weather will prevail for 1st night, a little chilly though with temps slipping into the 20s. The first day of the New Year is Sunday and it will be warm again as SW winds ahead of a coldfront usher in temps in the mid to upper 40s! The front means business however, and for the first time this season we will experience a true arctic arimass with daytime highs in the 20s and overnight lows in the single digits.
The NAO forecast of trending toward neutral next week supports the cold surge but we would really need it to continue to trend in that direction and go negative to get any substantial storms around here...we will see.
