Weather It Is (Cold Update)

Good Evening:

The sun is setting on a beautiful day -- the kind of day you wish you could save in a bottle and open whenever you feel like it.

Yet, the weather is about to change as the coldest air of the season, and rival if not exceed the coldest air of the decade, as a storm makes its way into our area over the next few days.

As mentioned in our previous blog, we're going to get rain and cold, which will end in a deep freeze by Monday morning, but most likely the upper level trough will pass too far to our east to bring a significant snow to the Jerusalem area.

On the other hand, there has been some back and forth in the model forecasts between a wetter and colder situation versus just cold.  The reason for this is that there are two storms, one moving eastward north of Great Britain from off the northern Atlantic and the other dropping down into Friday's trough from Siberia.  The Atlantic storm is supposed to push the warm ridge of air over Europe and its downstream trough eastward, with the upper level trough sliding by to our east. If the Atlantic storm were to swing further north than forecast, it would allow the ridge to remain further west, bringing the upper level system closer to us on Sunday.  It's not likely, but there is still some uncertainty in the forecast track of this storm, and hence our storm.

What is not uncertain, is the extreme cold to arrive Sunday and Monday, lasting into Tuesday.

Highlights.

1) Temperatures begin to fall tonight, Thursday night, as cold air rushes in.

2) Winds will increase and Near Gale or Gale Force Winds will develop by sometime Shabbat afternoon, before tapering off towards Sunday morning.

3) Three Periods of precipitation: rain late tonight (Thursday Night), Friday afternoon into Friday night, and Shabbat, with forecast rain amounts generally 25 to 50 mm.  Thunderstorms possible Thursday night/Friday morning as storms develop in desert dusty air.

4) Rain mixed with sleet in the higher elevations around Jerusalem Friday night and Shabbat day.

5) Sunday: temperatures fall sharply colder with periods of light rain and snow in the higher elevations of the Galilee and Jerusalem.  Snow on the Hermon.  The chance of an accumulating snow is currently 20%, but wet roads could freeze over towards Monday morning.

6) The extreme cold continues countrywide into Tuesday morning.

Stay tuned for updates,

Barry Lynn