Southern Soaker Followed By Frigid Christmas Weekend...

A fast moving upper disturbance is triggering widespread showers & T-Storms along the Gulf Coast.  This disturbance will race by us before daybreak ending the rain threat.  However, low clouds are likely to linger keeping us damp & chilly. 

It's bad enough to be rainy again, but add in brisk winds with chilly temps. and I'd call it borderline miserable.  When it gets this cold & wet, I'd rather it be snow!  The upper flow over the nation continues mainly west to east, but that's about to change.  The deep East Coast trough will form by Thursday driving the super cold (30-40+ below) up in Canada down towards us.

Let's go through the predicted upper air pattern beginning on Thursday.  The top graphic is valid for Thursday morning with the next being on Friday.

Note the "polar vortex" (arrow) deepens as it moves from North Dakota to Chicago.  That should result in near blizzard conditions north of the low.

By Saturday morning the vortex lifts to the NE, but can you see a weak feature (arrow) over eastern Texas?  That could be enough to trigger a wave along the polar front down over the Gulf.  IF that proves reality, we could see a band of heavy snow develop along the northern Gulf coast on Christmas Eve.  Just want to throw that out to give you snow dreamers some hope.

One thing appears certain, this weekend's hard freeze will be prolonged (4-5 days) & require full precautions to prevent losing plants &/or bursting pipes.  In fact, it could be only of the coldest Christmas Days ever.

I will start moving my plants on Wednesday and accept the fact that many of the inground stuff will not survive the hard freeze.

We still have a lot of rain coming for this evening through after midnight, but Tuesday will be drier but still chilly.   I will probably pick the remaining grapefruit from my tree on Thursday since we're expecting 22-26 across the South Shore for several nights.  It could be worse Gang.  Think of all the folks trying to get home for Christmas with a raging blizzard/Nor'Easter.  Safe travels and be ready for delays.  Stay tuned!