Weather

FIRST ALERT: Wet Roads Creating Tricky Travel for Holiday

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More than half the nation is under a weather advisory, watch, or warning on this big travel day before Thanksgiving.

The East Coast is the quietest place. Here in New England, the storm that brought so much snow from Colorado to Minnesota is passing well to west and north, pushing a warm front in with rain showers developing later Wednesday.

We have a few hours of sunshine in the morning while clouds thicken. This is before showers develop midday in western New England and spread east to become heavy by about 6 or 7 p.m. in the central and northern parts of our region.

Temperatures Wednesday will be in the low 50s in southern New England, 40s north. Meanwhile, it’s in the 30s from the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont through central Maine, where snow and rain are expected from the evening through Thursday morning.

For most of us, we’ll get showers or a period of rain from about 6 p.m. to midnight. We may even get perhaps a thunderstorm. Wind will be increasing from the south, gusting past 30 mph.

Low pressure stalls near Northern Maine with a cold front pushing off the south coast Thursday. It’s going to be slow for us to clear out in northern and eastern New England.

Snow will linger in the mountains of Vermont, northern New Hampshire, central and northern Maine through lunchtime Thursday. Some of our football games will require winter gear, like hats and boots and gloves. But for most of the busiest cities and airports, as well as central and southern New England, we should dry out by lunchtime, as the story will be the wind.

Gusts past 40 mph are likely as temperatures in the 40s, fall into the 30s by late in the day.

Wind will continue Thursday night as temperatures fall in the upper 20s in southern New England and lower 20s north. We should see sunshine return for most of New England Friday, with a high temperature in the 30s. Wind will continue to gust past 30 mph, giving us a wind chill factor below freezing all day long.

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Our Thanksgiving system then stalls over eastern Canada and strengthens.

This is creating a block in the atmosphere so the powerhouse storm that came in to California Tuesday is going to be forced to track south of New England later in the weekend.

We should have a nice, dry day on Saturday with a high temperature again in the 30s as wind decreases.

Then, clouds return Sunday with a chance of rain or snow developing during the afternoon. The rain-snow line will be further south than last Sunday.

Low pressure will reform south of New England Sunday night and early Monday, with the rain-snow line likely collapsing toward the coast. We may have a high impact event here Sunday night and Monday morning with snow removal crews out on the roads.

There will be a lot of shifting around with our storm track and timing as we get closer to the event, as seen here in our First Alert 10-Day Forecast.

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