Posted by Dave Longley - Everyone anxiously starts looking at the weather for the next several days.  Whether they're headed out of town to visit friends or family, or staying here in CNY, everyone wants to know the weather.  We're getting closer, but by no means crystal clear in terms of the weather heading toward turkey day.

Things remain quiet this Monday morning, with high pressure parked over northern New England.  At one point, I saw that Saranac Lake was down to 1 above!!  There were lots of single digit readings all up through the St. Lawrence Valley this morning.  That dry air will hold in place through today, with a mix of sun and clouds expected.

Some more big time energy has been slamming into the Pacific NW and a piece of that will come our way tonight.  It's now moving through the northern Plains.  This system should do a good job at bringing milder air back to our area.  Precipitation will arrive tonight, and we may very well be right on the fence in terms of precipitation type right when the moisture arrives.  Any wintry mix of rain and snow will change to all rain by Tuesday morning as temperatures both down at the ground, and aloft over us, rise above freezing.

Any precipitation that falls Tuesday or Wednesday for that matter here in central New York, will fall as rain as temperatures will remain quite mild.  Wet roads could slow you down a bit Wednesday.  Now onto Thanksgiving Day.

There will be a cold front across the Great Lakes Wednesday, and that is the bone of contention in our computer forecast models with regards to Thanksgiving Day weather.  One model, the NAM, has an area of low pressure near Toronto Wednesday morning, and then blasts a cold front through here by later Wednesday.  The precipitation would be rain through the day Wednesday, with a changeover to snow by Thursday.  We'd have lake effect to deal with Thursday.  This scenario, at least at this point, appears to be an outlier.

The majority of the other solutions that I looked at this morning, also indicate a cold front across the Great Lakes.  However with more energy in the jet stream yet to move over that front, it is held up by waves of low pressure rippling along it.  In fact, a pretty strong storm is forecast to develop near us by midday Thursday.  This would be enough to keep us warm enough for primarily rain through at least midday Thursday, with a changeover to snow Thursday night, and then lake effect Friday.

So, which is right?  Right now we're still leaning toward the milder solution through midday Thursday, because it's supported by the majority of our computer models.  That's why we still have temperatures in the 40s for Thanksgiving Day with any frozen precipitation not expected until late in the day.  Just a heads up though, the weather changes later in the day Thursday could be quite abrupt; from mild and rainy to cold and snowy.

Also another note.  If you have flight plans for Wednesday.  The major airports in the east, JFK, LGA, DCA, CLT and ATL look okay at first glance.  The problem spots are going to be DTW and ORD closer to the front mentioned above, and in ORD's instance, they could be quite a bit snowier. Here is the FAA Flight Traffic control website and another sight that I check often when I have to fly: Flight Aware 

We'll be sure to keep you posted on the weather over the next several days.