Florida, It's A Night To Hunker Down...

Hurricane season brings us warm core storms while winter brings us the cold core systems.  What's the difference?  Warm air has a greater capacity to hold water vapor often resulting in rain totals in excess of 5-10"+.  Winter's colder systems cannot hold as much water vapor. However, you can still get heavy rains of 4-6"+ .  The well advertised low in the Gulf has finally closed off west of Fort Myers. The Sunshine State is anything but this afternoon.

This low will move across Florida tonight and emerge up the East coast for Sunday & Monday.  If you live along areas affected & don't need to travel, "hunker down" and shelter in place.  Our rains this afternoon have nothing to do with the Gulf Low.

A cold front trailing from a surface low in eastern Iowa is triggering a rain shield over the Ohio & Mississippi River valleys, right where we need it.  The air behind this front is not very chilly, but as the Gulf low moves up the East Coast Sunday & Monday, a secondary surge of colder air will dive into the Gulf South.  

Tuesday & Wednesday mornings will be the coldest with the North Shore approaching freezing.  A gradual warming arrives by Wednesday PM lasting into next weekend.  I still don't see any real cold air coming our way during the next 7-10 days.  After doing some looking, I've found where the Super Cold (40-50 below) air is hiding.

Nope, it's not northern Canada, but it's on the other side of the North Pole.  Russia & Siberia are in the deep freeze.   Until I see that chill showing up over Alaska & northern Canada, I don't see us getting any hard freeze threats.  Finally,

Yesterday I told you where you need to go for a White Christmas.  Here's a close in daylight satellite view of Colorado.  All of the white is snow on the ground including some east of the front  range south of Denver.  If you love to ski, drink hot toddies by the fire and wear lots of heavy clothes, head West my friends.  Me?  I'm staying home for Christmas where it might be 70+!  Stay tuned!