Freefall continues

Over the weekend, my colleague Justin Gehrts posted on the arrival of the cold air. We're off Saturday's highs by twenty degrees areawide with additional falls likely over the next few days. Kind of sounds like Wall Street, doesn't it? We can only hope our economy follows our temp-trend for late-week.

Let's talk about this blast of cold air for a minute. While the surface cold front moved through early today the brunt of the cold air is moving in later. Large surges of cold air work from the top-down. Much of this is due to the friction of the surface of the earth (hills, valleys, buildings, vegetation, and even clouds) the air simply moves easier at higher elevation. So, over the next day or so the cold air will really be moving into the region aloft (and much of this will translate down to the surface). With so much cold air aloft tomorrow, there will be a big differential between the surface temps and those aloft. It's a certainty that this will produce clouds and in turn keep us mightly cool. The interesting thing about this scenario is what happens when night falls. That temperature differential (surface-aloft) goes away after sunset so the clouds are likely to evaporate. We'll have to watch this closely as clouds depart, our nighttime temps may get down into the upper 30s...enough for frost.

Bottom line: Get used to the chilly afternoons and cold nights...but let's hold out for a "bail-out" which will in turn get us back on track...back into the 70s for the weekend. If only we could get Wall Street fixed by then, right?