The cold, dry air mass that arrived earlier in the week continues to move eastward, and the end of this mid-winter freeze is in sight. The temperature has been more or less falling since just after noon on Wednesday. That pattern is now reversing itself and we can look forward to the temperature slowly rising from now until Sunday afternoon. Central Park bottomed out at 17 degrees this morning and is expected to warm into the upper 20s by midnight. A westerly wind during the day will make it feel like it's in the teens.
As the high moves offshore the winds will start coming out of the south. The wind shift is the first indication that a warm front is slowly approaching. The second indication will be snow, possibly 1-2 inches in the city, starting after midnight. As the air temperature rises we could have a brief period of freezing rain, where rain freezes when it hits the cold ground, after sunrise tomorrow. The ground will warm by late Saturday morning and we'll have to contend with a rainy remainder of the day.
The temperature will continue to rise, and the rain will continue to fall, throughout the night on Saturday as the warm front pushes its way through the region. When the warming and rain will stop depends on the timing of the trailing cold front. Sunday's high will be somewhere in the mid to upper 50s. Look for cooler weather behind the front, Monday will only warm to the lower 30s, before the temperature eases back to near normal later in the week.
