The 614cast
Today’s tl;dr
🌤️ Mostly sunny and less windy, high in the lower 50s.
Forecast highlights
😴 Quiet weather, overall
Things are pretty uneventful ‘round these parts for the next little while. This forecast weather map from the European model through Sunday evening illustrates it well, as there’s only that blip of weekend shower potential for us:
Here’s a closer view. This is the forecast for late Saturday evening. A cold front will be pushing through and might squeeze out some spotty showers. Activity would be light and still looks to be confined to Saturday evening through early Sunday… very little impact.
We’ll have lighter wind the next two days, but the weekend system kicks gusts up to around 25–30 mph again, which is similar to what we had the past few days.
Regarding temperatures, we’ll be in the 50s the next couple of days and then cross the 60-degree mark on Saturday. That cold front Saturday night will drop things again, but we should still be in the 50s on Sunday. After that, things are pretty hazy.
Here’s the National Blend of Models temperature forecast; it’s a “box and whisker” plot. The boxes encompass the middle 50% of the range of forecast temperatures, leaving out the coldest quarter and warmest quarter. A small box indicates a tight range in forecast temperatures, while a large box is a large range.
And next week has a large range. I added lines for 40° and 60°… and you can see that some days next week have a nearly 20-degree spread!
I’m hesitant to believe the warm end of guidance that pushes near or past 60 most days. But I’m also not seeing a big reason to believe the 40s at this time, either, except for probably Monday. I think seasonable 50s are a fair expectation for most of next week.
📊 Today’s almanac
Normal low/high: 36 / 53
Record low/high: 11 (2019) / 74 (1955)
Sunrise/set: 7:15 a.m. / 5:17 p.m.
↩️ Ceiling fan direction
Want to help make your heating a little more efficient this winter? Have your ceiling fan spin clockwise on its lowest speed setting.
Because of how fans’ blades are angled, a clockwise spin will create a slight updraft, pushing the warm air that’s risen to the ceiling outward. That’ll mix up the air just enough to distribute the warm air a bit more evenly throughout the room.
🌭 For the weather weenies
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Time lapse of northern lights in Virginia, with bonus meteors (Peter Forister Photography/Facebook)
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Aurora color guide (Eric Fisher/Bluesky)
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Northern lights on nighttime satellite (CIRA/Bluesky)
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Arctic blast cold-stuns iguanas in Florida during record-setting temperature plunge (FOX Weather)