First Defense Weather 12/30/20

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That's 42 degrees and sunny.com. First defense weather, the Southern Tier's only live and local weather source

Now, here's Chief Forecaster Dakota Hunter. Well, happy Wednesday to you. And let's talk about where we are for seasonal snow as we run right now

So we've had 21 inches of snow throughout the winter season so far

We should be at 30.9 inches. So that's a deficit of close to 10 inches for the season

And we're actually running close to about where we were last year. At this time last year, we were at 21.2

So you can see only about 200s of an inch less of snow than we had last year

All right. So let's take you through Future Scan. Now, we've had a few pieces of sunshine early this afternoon

That's going to go away. And widespread rain showers are going to be coming in from west to east through the afternoon

A southerly wind component today. So that'll help warm us up a little bit. But it's not really going to feel all that warmer

We have a healthy south wind. And so that's going to help keep wind gusts, possibly up to 50 miles an hour near the Lake Erie shoreline

There is a wind advisory until 4 o'clock for the western southern tier

Now, colder air works in tonight, changes this over to some snow showers, Little accumulation, if anything, an inch on the hills

That'll do it. And then the best chance of snow tomorrow will be in the morning. Clears out for the afternoon

New Year's Eve is looking great. We'll show you the New Year's Eve forecast in just a second here

But our main focus is going to turn to New Year's Day, Friday

As a deep storm system passes close to the region, we could see some icing early in the day

This is by about the afternoon time on Friday Notice all this pink When we start getting into this pink that always a red flag in our forecast because that generally means sleet or freezing rain Now we just a little too far out for some of the high data to actually start coming in

but some of the early model guidance does suggest that this could be accumulating freezing

rain, aka ice, on the roadways. And the ice accumulation at this point is not looking anything major

But again, about a quarter of an inch is the magic number. That's when we start, you know, kind of raising the flood

flags for possible power outages with the weight of the ice. But we don't think we're going to get a quarter of an inch, but we do think there could

be enough to slicking up the roadways through the afternoon on Friday. So if you're traveling New Year's Day, keep an eye on that because the slick spots could

be returning with some of that ice. The New Year's Eve ball drops still from downtown Buffalo from atop of the electric

tower tomorrow night. Of course, you can't go to the game due to the pandemic. The ball drop due to the pandemic

But of course, it will be televised 1159 as the ball is descending from

atop of electric tower. It'll be about 27 degrees in downtown Buffalo with most of the cloudy skies

So no weather hassles for the ball drop this year in Buffalo, but unfortunately, we can't go to it

But some early sunshine early this afternoon. Rain showers develop west to east as a storm system moves close to the region

A bit milder in windy, 34 on the hills, 46 near the immediate Lake Erie waterfront, 15 to 30 miles per hour winds with that gust, possibly up to 50, near the immediate Lake Erie shoreline

So the 42 degrees in sunny seven day, 32 tomorrow. The scattered flakes early in the morning clears out for the afternoon

Friday, some icing, especially late morning, early afternoon. Then we'll transition to likely all rain 38 Saturday as we kick off the first weekend of 2021, wet and mild 44

35 on Sunday, just an isolated snow shower. We're a bit milder both Monday and Tuesday with temperatures close to near 40

And some partial sunshine could be possible each day