It looks like there’s a small chance of snow tonight, although the weather service is indicating the best chances of accumulation are going to be in northwest Georgia — so probably not affecting the metro Atlanta area. There may be a few flakes here and there towards morning, but it shouldn’t amount to much. On the other hand, I wouldn’t miind having to eat my words.

They are getting snow in Houston — a bunch of it., at least for them. About an inch of snow fell in Houston today, marking the earliest ever recorded snowfall in that southern Texas city. The previous earliest snowfall was set last year on December 10th. This is also the first time it has snowed in Houston two years in a row.

Whether snow falls overnight or not, Saturday night promises to be the coldest night of the season so far. Temperatures are expected to drop into the mid 20s, as high pressure and radiational cooling take over. Temperatures have hovered around the freezing mark several evenings this fall, but this should mark the first hard freeze of what is expected to be a colder than normal winter.

If you’re like me, you are probably sick of all the rain we’ve had over the past month or so. The good news, in addition to less rain today than predicted, is that the weather is going to change beginning on Friday. The bad news is that we are going to get cold.

A front passes through on Friday, blowing out all the rain and tropical air. Behind the front is some of the Canadian air that has been causing some record cold temperatures in the upper Midwest. And, because of a Nor’Easter that will be bringing snow to Pennsylvania and points north, the cold air will be driven further south than it might otherwise have been. The low temperatures forecast for the weekend were in the mid 40s earlier this week. Tonight’s zone forecast calls for temperatures around 40 Saturday and Sunday nights.

But, if you look at the GFS modeling, it’s calling for temperatures around freezing Monday morning in Atlanta, and in the upper 20s for Athens. Will we get there? The record low in Atlanta is 34 for Saturday, 31 for Sunday and 35 for Monday. The normal first freeze in Atlanta is November 10th, about three weeks away. We may not be breaking any records this weekend, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we did end up below 40 degrees. If your furnace has a pilot light, you might want to check it and/or turn it on.

If it seems colder than normal for mid-November, you’re right. North Georgia got its first cold shot on Sunday after the wet weather moved out. This afternoon, another cold front passed through, although with the dry air, there wasn’t any precipitation associated with the front. Behind the front, there’s more cold air blowing in, literally. There’s a wind advisory for Tuesday, so even though temperatures in the Atlanta area will only reach the mid 40s, it will feel like the low 30s tomorrow afternoon.

We get the coldest weather of the season so far on Wednesday morning, with lows predicted in the low 20s in metro Atlanta, and freezing temperatures as far south as the Tampa area. The cold weather is unlikely to break a record, however. The record low for November 19th in Atlanta is 18 degrees, set back in 1903. Although forecasters have predicted freezing temperatures on and off for the last few weeks, much of the Atlanta area has yet to get a freeze. Wednesday should put an end to that for everybody, making the first freeze of 2008 about ten days later than normal. The record low for Atlanta in November, by the way is 2 degrees, set on November 25th, 1950. Fortunately, it won’t get that cold.

After this round of cold, things warm up, but only slightly. We should be seeing highs around 60 and lows around 40 for the last two weeks in November, instead look for highs in the upper 50s and lows in the low to mid 30s through the end of the month. What about Thanksgiving weather? The cold, dry air is going to keep most of the US dry for the next week, and following that, there’s a chance of rain moving from west to east.

Looking at the forecast models, on Thanksgiving Day, there will be a band of rain centered along a line from Wisconsin through Texas. Light rain or snow is possible in the north from Wyoming on the west to Michigan on the east, and there’s a chance of precipitation from Arizona to Arkansas in the south. Most of the east coast, including Georgia will be dry. By Black Friday, the rain will move further east, and shoppers on the east coast could get wet, with the bulk of the precipitation centered from Mississippi to southern Ohio. Overall, the cold weather means that for any snow that does fall, it will likely stick.

So far in November, while it’s been a bit cooler than normal in north Georgia, it’s also been very dry. With .64 inches of rain recorded at Hartsfield Airport, there’s been slightly more than a third of normal precipitation month to date. The dry weather has now moved 12% of Georgia into Exceptional Drought status, compared to 1% last week. The hard-hit area includes much of the northeast corner of the state, including North Gwinnett county, and all of the Lake Lanier drainage basin. Issuing a climate report late last week, Georgia climatologist David Stooksbury said,

The ocean-atmosphere system is in what climatologist call a neutral pattern, meaning it is in neither an El Niño nor a La Niña pattern. Historically, neutral-pattern winters have been very variable.

There is no strong indication that the winter of 2008-09 will be abnormally wet or dry. The trend over the past 15 years, however, has been for dry winters.

There is also no strong indication that the winter will be abnormally warm or cool. An important historical observation is that every major devastating freeze has occurred during a neutral-pattern winter.

With recent winters being our best guide, the most prudent response is to assume that this winter will tend toward the dry side. Water conservation efforts should continue.

Finally, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies reported that October, 2008 was the warmest on record last week. Since many parts of the world were reporting earlier than normal winter conditions, the report was challenged, and found to be wrong. You can read about it here. It makes you wonder when one of the leading proponents of Global Warming makes such a big error.

This is going to be one of those grab-bag posts. Sometimes I see things in the news that are weather related, but don’t post immediately about them.There have been a few things like that recently, so here goes.

We’ll start with the drought, and more specifically, the effects on the Atlanta water supply. As Lake Lanier remains at near record low levels, Georgia EPD Director Carol Couch has asked the Army Corps of Engineers to reduce discharges from the lake to create a flow of 650 CFS at Peachtree Creek on the Chattahoochee River. This is similar to a reduction made last spring which, Couch argues, didn’t cause any environmental damage, and would save some 11.7 billion gallons of water.

Meanwhile, Senator Obama has apparently decided that Florida is more important than Georgia, telling potential Sunshine State voters he would side with them when it comes to deciding who gets water from the Apalachicola Chattahoochee Flint river basin. This prompted a quick response from Senators Isakson and Chambliss expressing their disappointment with his comments. It’s another reason to think carefully before you decide to vote for the Chosen One.

The recent cold snap tells us that Autumn is truly here. While it seemed colder than normal, Atlanta is actually registering 2.1 degrees above normal for the month through yesterday, with a mean temperature of 66.6 degrees. Here in Lawrenceville, it’s been a bit cooler than that, and I’ve noticed that early morning temperatures in other metro Atlanta locations consistently register lower than what’s recorded at the airport. (The home page and forecast pages now show current conditions for several cities in the area.) The outlook for the last week of October and the first week of November points to colder than normal temperatures (and lower than normal rainfall) for much of Georgia. We should, however, get some rain this weekend—Accuweather says to expect just less than an inch—which would give us above normal rainfall for October.

While Georgia worries about temperatures in the low 40s, other parts of the country are already getting snow. In addition to snow in the upper elevations of the Rocky Mountains (which can be expected almost any time of year), parts of New England are expecting a few inches in the next day or so. The growing season has ended for much of the northwestern US, and in the east, for parts of West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio, with temperatures dropping below freezing. On average, North Georgia doesn’t drop below freezing until the second week of November. I’m still waiting for ‘official’ winter weather forecasts; they seem awfully late this year.

Finally, I’ve added (at least temporarily) more detailed forecast information at the three or six hour level to every forecast, and provided improved accuracy for the graphical 3 day and 7 day forecasts, as you can see here. There is also an hourly forecast added for every location, for example, Atlanta, which includes things like rain amounts and probability of precipitation for each period. The information tends to be more accurate than what you get in the zone forecast, which covers a fairly wide area.

I have been providing an hourly forecast for Lawrenceville all along using a Rube Goldberg type system of producing the forecast on a computer here at home and transferring it to the website. Unfortunately that method won’t scale to other locations in the way my new data source does. So, the question is, how useful are the hourly forecasts, and should I keep them? Check your city using the Get Forecast menu item above, and let me know.

And, by the way, have you noticed how Global Warming has kind of dropped out of the news lately?

I almost hate to talk about it, in fear of creating a jinx, but it looks like the Atlanta area could get some rain starting late next week.  The last time we had any rainfall at all, either here or Atlanta Hartsfield was back on September 11th, when .01 inches was recorded.  That means we are at 23 days and counting without rain. Now, models are indicating a trough will begin to move from west to east, and could bring rain sometime Wednesday or Thursday.  It may not be one of these one hour wonders either.  Accuweather says that the rain will stick around through next weekend, bringing almost two inches by Columbus Day. The CPC extended outlook calls for above normal rainfall in the 6-10 day period and weather.com is less optimistic, with rain only on Wednesday or Thursday.

I did the annual fall aerating and overseeding for my fescue lawn two weeks ago, which means that I get a pass from the watering restrictions, and can turn on my irrigation system on the appropriate odd/evn schedule.  Even with watering, when I’ve dug a few holes to plant some new bulbs and shrubs, I’m amazed at how dry the ground is. The rain, if it comes, will be much appreciated.

Another thing we haven’t seen in a while is freezing temperatures.  While North Georgia typically doesn’t get its first frost until the second week of November, Michigan, Vermont and Maine are seening freezing temperatures over the next few days.  Nationwide, the lowest temperature this morning was 17 in Stonington, Michigan.  There’s a frost advisory tonight starting in Western Michigan and moving east through northen Ohio, much of northern Pennsylvania and southern New York.  And, snow has begun to fall in the Rocky Mountains, including areas of Utah and Colorado, where a few inches are predicted through tomorrow evening.

You can keep up with the approach of winter on our Winter Weather page.  It’s just a matter of time before we begin to feel winter’s effects here in Georgia.

With the weather in Georgia staying dry, and seemingly no end to the weather pattern that we’re in, there hasn’t been a lot of weather news to talk about. In fact, for most of the country, it’s been dry. But that’s not the case elsewhere.

In Mexico, 1 million people have been displaced, and there has been over $700 million dollars in damage due to flooding in the state of Tabasco. Some are calling the situation as bad as Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Meanwhile, in England, massive storms in the North Sea are expected to cause severe flooding and a tidal wave on the east coast of Britain. Officials there have closed a barrier at the mouth of the Thames river to prevent inland flooding.

Closer to home, most of North Georgia got its first freeze of the season last night. Temperatures here in Lawrenceville dropped to 28.5 on my thermometer early this morning. In Summerville it got down to 21 degrees, which appears to be the low for the state so far, followed closely by Peachtree City, which reported 22 degrees. Due to the city heat island, it only reached 32 degrees at Atlanta Hartsfield.

Clouds overnight will keep temperatures above freezing in most places, and then we’re in a warming trend through the first part of next week. It won’t be hot — just a return to normal temperatures, with highs in the mid 60s and lows in the mid 40s. Next week could bring the first rain we’ve seen since October 24th, with a chance of precipitation on Tuesday or Wednesday. Longer range models call for a better chance of rain the weekend of the 17th, but that’s too far out to be sure. Active weather systems are staying to our north, and the mountainous areas in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia could see the first snow of the year over the weekend.

The founder of the Weather channel is calling global warming a hoax. In a blog post, John Coleman, now a forecaster in San Diego, says global warming is “a non-event, a manufactured crisis and a total scam.” Says Coleman,

“Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data to create an allusion of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental whacko type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the “research” to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims.”

In drought related news, this week’s drought report for Georgia showed no change in the drought levels from the previous week, which is to be expected, given the lack of rainfall. Governor Perdue has arranged for a service outside the state capitol on Tuesday to pray for rain. The AJC reports that a group of rabbis are sending a representative to Atlanta to pray for rain on Wednesday. It seems that the last time the rabbi did this, in 1986, four days of rain followed.

And, the libertarian Ayn Rand Institute issued a press release yesterday criticizing the Endangered Species Act, and the requirement that billions of gallons of water be released from Lake Lanier to preserve the infamous mussels in the Apalachicola river basin. Taking on the environmentalists who claim that Atlanta has outgrown its capacity to provide water, the Institute says,

“People find it hard to believe that environmental laws like the Endangered Species Act could really require the sacrifice of human beings to nature. But that is exactly what they have to mean in practice; they mean that in order to sustain some obscure mussel species, the people in Atlanta must go without water.”

It looks like North Georgia is headed into some fine weather this weekend, with mostly clear skies, and high temperatures close to normal. There are a couple of quick weather-related items to keep an eye on as you enjoy the weekend:

• In years past, this would be the weekend we would ‘Fall Back’, and reset our clocks to standard time. Due to the changes made to the time law two years ago, that date has now been pushed back a week to accommodate the Halloween trick or treaters. The main downside to this, at least for those of us in the western part of the time zone, is that on the last day of Daylight Savings Time on November 3rd, the sun won’t be rising until 7:58 AM. Watch your computerized automated clocks tomorrow morning; some may not be programmed to recognize the new time change date.
• Early Tuesday morning could bring the coldest weather so far into the region. with overnight temperatures dropping below 40 degrees. There will be a warmup after that, but only short term. By the week of November 5th, we could be seeing temperatures in the low to mid 30s. Actually, that’s about normal. The first freeze date in the Atlanta area is typically around November 10th. Last year, Athens recorded the first freeze on October 24th, but it took until November 21st in Atlanta. In any case, now would be a good time to think about bringing in any plants you plan to keep over the winter.
• High pressure is likely to keep metro Atlanta rain free this week. The big question is whether the tropical season is going to come through with one more shot. Forecasters are keeping an eye on an area of low pressure south of Haiti that could develop into a tropical depression or storm early next week. Forecast models indicate that if it develops, the storm could pass across the Gulf of Mexico, and curve back over Florida. We will see if this comes to pass, and if it will bring some needed rain to Georgia.

Atlanta’s weather experienced a sudden change over the weekend, as temperatures dropped about 20 degrees compared to what we saw earlier in the month. The change was brought on by the first major upper level low pressure system driving cold air into the area.

The coldest of the temperatures for this round will be tonight and Wednesday, with temperatures in the upper 30s. Temps should stay below normal through the end of the first week of November, when we may see daytime temperatures above 70 degrees again.

The warmer than normal temperatures during the first part of the month, combined with a dry September have played havoc with the normal fall color and leaf peeping season. Last weekend I drove to Cincinnati and back. While Kentucky was beautiful, Tennessee and North Carolina, even in the Smokies, was still largely green, although clearly the leaves on the trees were thinner than they would be in midsummer. With little to no rain forecast for the next two weeks, we may see a less spectacular than normal fall season.

In case you’re wondering, the first freeze in the Atlanta area is normally around November 10th. Since 1948, the earliest freeze recorded at Hartsfield Airport was on October 18th, in 1948, and the latest freeze was on December 18th, in 1998. Of course, conditions at Hartsfield can vary a lot from what we see in Gwinnett. Last year, I recorded a freeze on November 14th, although Hartsfield didn’t see temperatures that low until December 14th.

What’s your guess for when we’ll see the first freeze of the year?