Great Start To The Week; Halloween Tricks And No Treats As Big Changes Loom

JAMESTOWN – High pressure over the Northeast is leading to some fantastic weather across Western New York for the next couple of days. However, rain will be sneaking back into the picture for Halloween with the potential for the first flakes of the season by the weekend.

***High Wind Watch in effect from 8 p.m. Thursday until 8 p.m. Friday for Chautauqua County***

Plenty of sunshine will take us through the afternoon today with highs 57 to 64 with a light south wind around 10 MPH.

Mainly clear skies tonight with the wind picking up to 10 to 20 MPH after midnight with some gusts around 30 MPH. Some patchy fog is likely along the valley locations. Morning lows 41 valleys, 52 Lake Erie shoreline.

Tuesday will be another great weather day with lots of sunshine and highs 59 to 67. It will be breezy however with a healthy west-southwest wind 13 to 24 MPH.

Wednesday should be mainly dry with partial sunshine but a spotty shower or two cannot be ruled out in the afternoon. Highs in the mid 50’s.

A deep storm system will move through the upper Great Lakes on Thursday and bring us the chance for another soaking rain through Thursday night. With moderate to heavy rainfall at times, forecast rain totals could be in the one-inch bracket, give or take a little bit more depend on where the heavier rain bands tend to hover.

The winds will also increase once again and become stronger through the night. The potential does exist for some gusts to reach damaging wind criteria (60 MPH+) Thursday night through Friday.

For that reason, the National Weather Service has issued a High Wind Watch for much of Western New York, going into effect Thursday evening and running through Friday evening.

This will not be a very good night for the Trick Or Treaters with lots of rain and wind to contend with.

The next challenging piece of this forecast comes after Halloween. As the storm moves into Canada, colder air will likely wrap back round the departing Low, dropping temperatures just enough to where we could end up with our first snowflakes of the season across parts of the region Friday or Saturday.

While I’m not totally sold on this idea yet, some of the early long-range data suggests enough cold air to work with over the weekend, possibly setting up some lake effect snow of Lake Erie.

Please keep in mind, it is way too early to give exact details in regards to where the lake snow bands could be, how much in terms of totals, or even if this happens at all as nothing is concrete yet.

This is a very complex and complicated storm system that we’re going to be dealing with and anything and everything in this forecast is subject to change as new data comes in throughout the week.