JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Well as promised, it's back. You know what I'm talking about: winter. And much like how you feel when your in-laws show up, you want to know just three things:
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Don't shout me down when I'm preachin' good!
The front rolled through Jacksonville around 8 p.m. Thrusday, accompanied by a very thin, but heavy band of showers. As promised, temperatures have fallen some 25 degrees from 24 hours ago across southeast Georgia and about 10 degrees in our Florida zones.
Check out Charlotte: Almost 40 degrees colder Friday morning.
Thursday's high in Jacksonville was a toasty 85 degrees. Firday's afternoon temperatures will only reach 50 or so You do the math. We'll be some 30 degrees or more colder Friday afternoon that just 24 hoursearlier. That changed faster than granny snatching a waffle from across the living room when she could only be seen doing it in super slow-mo. Anybody know what I'm talking about? Hilarious.
See below:
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ACROSS THE NATION:
Things will slowly return to normal Friday as snow and ice begin to thaw. In Kentucky, some motorists were stranded on a snow-packed highway for as long as 16 to 20 hours forcing some to spend the night in their cars. That story can be read HERE.
The misery isn't over, either. Bitterly cold weather has settled across the midwest and mid-Atlantic states. Many cities could set all-time March record lows. (Read article).
It's been a pretty significant cold blast to say the least. Record low-high and record lows have outnumbered warm weather records nearly 2 to 1 as seen below over the last 30 days provided by the National Climate Data Center:
If you compare just the last seven days, there were 1069 cold weather records compared to a scant 32 warm weather records over the same time period. That said, looking back over the last 365 days, there have been 44,533 warm weather records versus 44,645 cold weather records, a difference of 112 in the cold weather's favor.
So we've been talking a lot about this being winter's last hoorah. While it's a bit premature to say that, the pattern seems to be shifting to a warmer pattern allowing for spring to bloom nation wide.
March is a transition month where spring and winter begin to battle it out for dominance and periodically, winter wins the round. While warmth always wins out this time of year, we've seen freezes in Jacksonville as late as the first week of April.
Models are indicating a cool spell around March 16th (10 days from now) but it'll be just that, a cool down. Nothing significantly cold. We'll touch more on this as it gets closer.
JACKSONVILLE:
Closer to home, it's going to be a raw, gray day to round out your work week with temperatures remaining stuck in place, within about one degree of where we are this morning, for the rest of the afternoon. It's going to be chilly and breezy with no rain expected.
Let's take a look at the model for the upcoming weekend and into next week:
The above is the GFS model, one of many tools we use to forecast your weather each day. I want to point out that some of you have concerns about a possible freeze. Currently there are no indications of a freeze although this model shows a low of 36 degrees by Saturday morning. Currently, there are no freeze watches or warnings for our area but will monitor the situation just in case.
As seen in the yellow boxes, the high temperatures are being forecast to reach the 70s again by Sunday and possibly even the 80s by Tuesday -- even though at this time we are not forecasting that. It seems a bit warm but the trend is nice.
It's also shaping up to be somewhat unsettled -- as in there will be a chance of rain, albeit small chance, each day next week. As seen in the green circle, the rain chances hover between 30 and 40 percent Monday-Friday. It also won't be perfectly sunny, as seen in the white circle showing CL-Clear, OV-Overcast, PC-Partly Cloudy. That seems to indicate we'll have abundant clouds but still have some peaks of sunshine in the afternoon. So not bad, but not great either.
On a scale of 1 to 2000, the approximate number of flight delays and cancellations Thursday, I'd give Friday a 725 and the upcoming week around 1197. Take it or leave it, baby.