We won’t have the best weather on Thanksgiving Day, unfortunately, as a strong cold front moves through the area. It’ll bring with it some gusty winds and eventually some showers and even a few thunderstorms as we get into the afternoon and evening hours. It’ll be a warm and humid day by late November standards, with lows in the upper 50s to around 60° yielding to the mid-70s in the afternoon. This could help provide sufficient instability within a fairly well-sheared airmass to produce a strong to severe thunderstorm or two as the front approaches, with damaging straight-line wind gusts the main concern. The timing for storms appears to be generally between about 2pm-9pm, progressing west-to-east. It’s possible not everyone will see a storm or even any rain, but we just need to keep an eye on the storms that do fire to make sure they behave.

Friday & the weekend: Wintry blast arrives

Once the front gets through Thursday night, we’ll start to see that cooler and drier airmass begin to move in. Black Friday should start out on a somewhat cloudy note, though clearing should be gradual throughout the day, and we should be mostly clear by sunset. Temperatures will be starkly cooler — perhaps some 20° cooler, in fact — as lows in the mid-40s struggle to the mid-50s in the afternoon. We keep this chill intact heading into the weekend despite plenty of sunshine. Expect lows in the mid-30s each morning to yield to highs in the mid-50s each afternoon. We’ll certainly want to watch for frost and freeze concerns this weekend and especially into the first part of next week, when a reinforcing shot of cool air should bring many of us our first freeze of the season. Be ready to be bringing the sensitive plants indoors or getting them covered up.

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