Are you dreaming of a white Christmas? Keep dreaming because it's not looking good for snow in the city before the 25th. As of this morning the nearest snow to the city is in Orange and Dutchess counties and a lot of that is going to disappear with warmer temperatures and rain over the next couple of days. The ten-day forecast only shows one chance, next Sunday, and even that doesn't look too promising. That shouldn't come as a surprise as historically the city seldom has more than an inch of snow on the ground on Christmas Day.
There is definitely no chance of snow today as a high pressure system sitting over the Mid-Atlantic states is bringing us mostly sunny skies and a high in the mid 40s. This mild weather is the benign part of the Pineapple Express—warm, moist tropical air—that hit California last week. Cloud cover will increase overnight tonight as the moisture increases and a Great Lakes low pressure system pulls a warm front up the coast. There's a decent chance for rain tomorrow afternoon and evening.
Wednesday is shaping up to be a real transition day. The rain will have left but the cold air won't have arrived so the middle of the week should be sunny with a high near 50. Cooler air seeps in on Thursday, when the high will only reach the low 40s, and Friday is expected to be a few degrees cooler than that. Early indications are we could see a rain/snow mix this weekend, our best bet for making a white Christmas, but the forecast models are still disagreeing a lot on the details.
