It’s not often Thanksgiving is colder and snowier than Christmas, but this is one of those years. Mild is the theme for the next week or so as the arctic air continues to be scare across much of the country. Eventually, there is going to be a pattern shift as we head into the final few days of the month and January, but I am not convinced New England is going to see the core of this cold yet.
The storm track this week is far to our west and when this happens we end up on the very warm side of a storm. Strong southerly winds bring mild air very far north and will make it feel like spring for several days.

We’ve been hearing about a storm for Christmas Eve for a while and that is still on target. As a matter of fact I believe we have several rounds of showers or steady rain to move through starting late tonight and continuing into Christmas morning.

Some of the periods of showers might be heavy Christmas Eve and again Christmas morning. When the rainfall is finally over anywhere from 1 to 3 inches of rain will have fallen across the region. This pattern will bring a good amount of rain, but not flood worthy, beyond urban street flooding or perhaps some of the smaller streams.

There’s actually going to be a couple of areas of low pressure riding on the jet stream Tuesday through Friday. The map below shows the flow of air at 30,000 feet. At this level, also known as the jet stream, winds are often at their strongest. The U shape in the jet stream creates very warm air on the right and colder air on the left. The contrast between the two is why storms form.

Since the axis of the U or trough is so far to the west of New England, the strongest effects of the storm will remain west.
This isn’t to say we won’t have wind, rain and some minor splash over along the coastline, but any “flooding” that does occur would be minor and insignificant.

Winds will be gusty Wednesday night and Thursday and along the coast, where winds can exceed 30 knots, isolated power outages could occur, but the theme will be isolated, not widespread.
The Jetport will likely see some delays when winds are gusty or when the rain is very heavy, but again this is not a storm that will have enormous direct impacts. There can be ripple effects to air travel as other airports have issues. I don’t suspect massive problems as we have seen in past years.

The map below shows where the storm will be on Christmas Eve. The black lines or isobars represent air pressure. The tighter the lines are together the stronger the wind.

I think the most interesting variable you’ll be talking about on Christmas will be the temperatures near 55F. If we do reach 55F on Christmas it will be one of only a handful of times we have exceeded 50F on record.

The warmest ever was back in 1888 when the high was 57 in Portland, but some consider 1994’s 53F the Christmas record because of the changes made to observations since the early 1900’s. The bottom line, Portland has only exceeded 50F on rare occasions on Christmas morning.

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