The final lake-effect rains of this cool cycle pull out of the city later Thursday—but, not before some of the chilly showers ride NNE winds, blowing several thousand feet above ground-level, as much as 30 to 40 miles inland. A gradual breakdown in these winds is behind the predicted end of cloud and precipitation formation.
The wind-free environment predicted to take hold Thursday night threatens fairly widespread frost before a multiday warm-up begins Friday. Highs are to surge from the 50s to the 60s Saturday and near 70° Sunday. It’s to become the biggest “warm-up” here in two weeks. 60% of years since 1970 have produced at least one additional 70° beyond this date.
The rebound couldn’t occur at a better time. With only 19% of possible sunshine recorded over the past week, daytime highs have averaged 51.2°—a reading 17° lower than a comparable period one year ago.
-Tom Skilling

Floridians, subjected to eight hurricanes in the past 18 months, faced a new challenge Tuesday—record-breaking cool air in the wake of deadly hurricane Wilma. With electricity still out in an estimated three million homes, the chill was unwelcome and uncomfortable. Record morning lows included 48° at Vero Beach, 49° in Melbourne and 52° at West Palm Beach.
The big news Tuesday in the Mid-Atlantic and New England was wind-driven rain and the season’s first snowstorm. Rains fell horizontally in Boston in howling northeast winds clocked to 52 m.p.h. Buoys operated in the Atlantic by NOAA rocked in 20-25 ft. swells which tore at the coastline. Meantime, an injection of cold air turned rain to wet, tree-snapping snow responsible for power outages from interior Pennsylvania, western and northern New York and interior New England.
-Tom Skilling

A massive nor’easter, pounding the country’s Mid-Atlantic and Northeast region, undergoes the meteorological equivalent a fuel injection Tuesday once the remnants of Hurricane Wilma become part of its massive 2,200 mile diameter circulation. An area from Chicago, where northerly winds promise another day of sporadic lake rains, to Boston, home to 60 m.p.h. NE winds likely to generate two-story waves which tear at the nearby coast, is under this system’s far-reaching grip.
New York City has already recorded the equivalent of four Octobers worth of rain and may soar close to its all time 16.85” monthly precipitation record set in September, 1882 with today’s rain. But, cold air wrapping south on the storm’s backside shifts rain to snow Tuesday and threatens a tree and powerline-snapping 6-12” accumulation in the higher elevations of Pennsylvania, New York and northern New England.