Hurricane Matthew continues to be the big weather story Wednesday after its heavy rains and strong winds devastated parts of Haiti and Cuba. It is now setting its sights on the Bahamas and the southeastern United States.

The models have shifted even more and now it appears Matthew will stay south of New England and never have impact on our weather.

Across Maine, the weather is expected to be nice most of weekend. You will be hard-pressed to find clouds the next several days, and a warming trend will also be in place. After Wednesday’s highs in the 60s, we will have readings back into the lower and even middle 70s the rest of the week. It will almost feel like beach weather in the afternoon on Thursday and Friday.

The reason for the nice weather is high pressure building in from the north. The air with this system is slightly warmer than typical for early October, and therefore our readings will be quite pleasant. I don’t see any risk of an early frost in this pattern.

The high pressure is expected to keep Hurricane Matthew from reaching very far to the north and may actually have it stall or do a loop off the Southeast coast this weekend. The wide swings in the forecast with regard to Matthew illustrate exactly why I always recommend taking the long-range forecasts with a large grain of salt. There are often big fluctuations when you get beyond three or four days.

If the present forecast holds, then we are also looking at a fantastic Columbus Day weekend. While we need rain, the financial impact to the area from a rainy Columbus day weekend would be far greater than missing the rains and the drought remaining in place. The only showers could be Saturday night and early Sunday as a front crosses the area.

You can follow my weather updates on Twitter at @growingwisdom.