The week ahead: mild temperatures, multiple rounds of rain before Valentine’s Day

Weather Dan — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 22:10:09 +0000

This past week has been relatively quiet after recent bouts with snow and severe weather--it's been a bit of a relief to only worry about rain over the past week. If you're a snow lover that hasn't been sated by our recent flirtations with frozen precipitation, you're probably not going to be too thrilled by the outlook for the upcoming week. If you're someone who prefers rain over snow, sleet, freezing rain, or graupel (my favorite!), you probably won't be quite so disappointed. Nonetheless, let's dive in.

The 7-day temperature outlook paints an interesting picture: we start out cool this weekend (mid 40s tomorrow), and winds will remain a concern on Saturday, with some gusts up to 30 mph possible through tomorrow afternoon. However, we'll make it back up to a balmy 60 degrees on Monday. Unfortunately, no good weather goes unpunished; a developing Great Lakes low will be the impetus for the warm weather. A round of showers will accompany the northward-moving warm front, beginning late Sunday night and wrapping up around sunrise Monday.

Despite plenty of clouds hanging out until a cold front arrives Tuesday evening, both days will be quite mild. In fact, the current forecasts for Wednesday and Thursday aren't so bad, either; our average temperature extremes for this time of year are 50 and 30, and we'll be right in that neighborhood.

The other concern right now is a low that is currently being modeled to develop around midweek; while the models are fairly divergent regarding the exact track of this system, there is some agreement that this will bring some rain Wednesday afternoon and night, but will result in very little if any frozen precipitation at the moment. Beyond Valentine's Day, there's some concern about another developing system for President's Day Weekend, but it's too soon to say a whole lot about that system just yet.

Winter usually evokes images of snow and ice and lots of cold, but in reality, it's relatively mild in central Virginia. The pattern for the start of 2013 has been relatively busy, to take advantage of these couple mild days while we have them.

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