Blog: Cold and dry Saturday. Brief winter mix, rain and wind on Sunday.

the weather Friday and Saturday will be fairly calm, but we will have bad weather in the area on Sunday. We will have some impacts here, but the biggest impacts will probably be to the west where snow accumulation is expected. I’ll briefly touch on the weather through Saturday, then focus more on Sunday.

Today there is an area of ​​low pressure off the coast. It has increased in strength, but luckily it is quite far offshore. The anticyclone is to our southwest. A cold front is approaching us from the north.

The depression is offshore enough to keep us dry today. Can’t rule out a pinch or two, but overall should be dry, cool and windy. Winds will remain strong from the north and northwest. They will run at 10-15 mph with gusts to 25 mph. This will help control temperatures. We will complete in the upper 40s to the lower 50s.

Tomorrow, this powerful cold front will descend towards our south. It will be cold and a bit windy. Additionally, clouds will increase in the afternoon. This means that our high temperatures will only be in the mid to upper 30s.

By tomorrow evening, an area of ​​low pressure will develop over the Tennessee River Valley. Moisture will flow in front of it in our area. We will darken here in the morning.

Low temperatures will likely drop to the 20s, but if clouds increase and winds pick up as expected, temperatures should rise a bit before dawn. Models show enough moisture to create precipitation Sunday morning. They don’t agree at the time. Our Future Trak model has a brief winter mix over our early Southwestern cities and counties. Then there’s this mix that crawls north.

It has the mixture reaching as far east as West Suffolk and James City County.

However, there is mostly rain developing over the rest of the region. It also has temperatures above freezing point during this time. The GFS model is a bit older with the precip. However, there is more rain in the area with the rain/snow line closer to I-95.

The euro is somewhere in between. NAM has early winter mixing in inland areas (with rains developing elsewhere). Then also he takes everything to the north. All models transition from precip to rain throughout the day. The GFS model even takes the rain/snow line west of Richmond for a while.

Models all have rain here on Sunday evening with possibly heavy showers. I wouldn’t even be surprised if we had a few thunderstorms in the area. The low pressure area will move northeast by early Monday morning. We might get a brief shuffling in the rear, but it should be light and scattered. Then we will dry until the noon hours.

The winds will be strong before, during and after the passage of this system. Winds could blow between 35 and 40 mph. Especially near the shore. They should face east/southeast in front of him. They will be out of the northwest behind him. This could lead to power outages if winds are at the upper end of the forecast. Additionally, the strong wind could create minor tidal flooding in the area. This part of the forecast could easily change as there are a lot of factors. Here is the National Weather Service coastal flood forecast page: NWS Coastal Flooding.

Other than that, there could be isolated flooding just from rainfall. We could get 1-2 inches of rain in the area.

This will help a little more with the current drought conditions.

As for the snow… We might get a dusting on some inland/western spots if the mix starts early enough. This would be mostly on grassy areas, bridges and vehicles. However, anything that tries to stick will likely melt. I think most of the snow accumulation will be in the west.

A little may try to stay Monday morning before sunrise as the system winds down, but the ground will be wet from Sunday evening rains. So it will be difficult to do. Forecasts could still change before then. We could still easily get colder….or milder. So stay tuned for forecast updates throughout the weekend. We still have time.

Meteorologist: Jeremy Wheeler