Despite the cold weekend, and it wasn’t pleasant at all, temperatures this month are still running more than 3.5° above average. Today will eat away a bit of that as will tomorrow, but the month overall will be another month of 2023 with above average temperatures.

This cold weather though is pretty stout and very widespread. This morning it’s slowly pressing toward the southeastern US and the mid-Atlantic states, and there is another shot coming our way for tomorrow as well.

Beyond that though, there will be moderation in the colder regime as is typical for this time of the year. Temperatures this weekend will be considerably more comfortable than this past weekend, so everything you postponed outdoors should be good to go for this coming weekend.

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One sentence forecast: Bright but cold with moderating late-week temperatures.

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Forecast

Today: Sunny and chilly with highs 40-45°

Tonight: Clear and cold with lows in the mid to upper 20s

Tomorrow: Mostly sunny, blustery and cold with highs near 40°

Wednesday: Cool with highs in the mid to upper 40s

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Discussion

Well, there is an end to the colder days. Thursday should be a transition type day as we come out of the colder air and enter a more seasonable phase of days that actually may trend above average with dry air, and at times some downsloping winds, which means a day or two of near 70° is possible between now and the middle of next week.

There will be occasional cold fronts in this flow with one coming tomorrow and then one on Friday night, and then perhaps early next week and this will be a dry pattern into the weekend and perhaps next Monday. Rain chances may increase a bit after that.

This morning we’ve started at least at 25° and that makes today the first day with a hard freeze in the region as a whole, and effectively the growing season has now come to an end regionwide. There were snowflakes out there yesterday that were more of a curiosity than anything else really. KCI didn’t get any of the snow though, and there was a brief 1-2 hour wintry mix though on Saturday night.

Most of the snow seemed to be just south of there, but at least officially at KCI no snow will be the report in terms of accumulations… not even a trace.

On average in October we do average 3/10″… not this month.

As we get ready to turn the calendar into November, we average 1.1″ of snow in November and 2″ of precipitation. In October we ended up with almost 3.5″ of precipitation that was about 1/4″ above average. The reduction in precipitation though really kicks in in November into the late Winter around here.

There isn’t likely to be much in the way of precipitation for at least a week or so. So things will start to dry out… there’s a lot of mud out there right now.

Nationally this morning you can see the extent of the chillier air gripping much of the country.

The mid-Atlantic and Southeast is still holding on to the warmer temperatures.

The snowstorm in the Denver area was impressive with widespread 4-8″ with some heavier totals in the mountains and for areas south of Denver.

Denver dropped to at least 13° this morning.

There is another shot of cold air coming down the pike for tomorrow; this will increase the wind tomorrow at least in the morning and the dump of cold air will settle into the area tomorrow into Wednesday. It should be noted the record low on Wednesday is 20°, set in 1991.

We may get close to that.

After that though there is a nice moderation coming, one that models can underestimate heading into the end of the week. Friday looks warmest with mid-60s and some upside.

That’s it for today… a quiet week of weather means only a few blogs this week.

The feature photo comes from Lonnie Knox down towards Adrian, MO

Joe