Monday (1/2/17) Morning Weather Briefing
GOOD MORNING AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Hope your weekend was a good one. Many are still off today and it is a good day to catch up on indoor projects/sleeping/watching football. It will be one of those "deceptive radar" days, where little or nothing is showing up on the radar but it is raining a little.
A little rain or drizzle is likely at times today; often the radar does not "see" the rain because it is falling out of low clouds that are below the radar beam. Meteorologists rely on many tools to predict the weather; one of them is an atmospheric "sounding", or a vertical snapshot of the wind, moisture and temperatures as you go up through the atmosphere. With the temperature and dewpoint nearly the same in the lowest 5,000 feet today, that's nearly 100% humidity over a pretty good vertical distance and the result will be a damp, gray day.
At least it's turning mild! Highs today in the 40s.
Meanwhile, it's a stormy morning in Texas and there is a significant (especially for January) severe weather risk in the Deep South today. 
WET AND MILD TUESDAY
Tuesday will be another wet one, with steadier, somewhat heavier rain than today...especialy before lunchtime.
Rain totals may average a 1/2" or so late tonight into Tuesday.
BUT temperatures will be quite balmy
RETURN OF THE ARCTIC AIR
Arctic air will blast back into Ohio and PA later this week, starting Wednesday. It will be accompanied by some gusty winds and snow flurries. 
Temperatures: Ouch. 
WATCHING WEEKEND SYSTEM
A lot of intrigue on the models in regards to a system that may or may not impact parts of the Ohio Valley Friday into Saturday. Right now I think that it's unlikely to produce big snows around here; it is likely to be a total miss or we'll just be on the fringes. Current GFS model for Saturday:
Could be quite a problem for the Carolinas if this idea is right. We rely heavily on model "ensembles" in the ling range, especially when there is a lot of uncertainty. Out of the 21 "members" of the GFS Ensemble, only a couple suggest any high impacts for eastern OH and western PA. Other models also mostly show a "miss" for us. Stay tuned.
LONG RANGE: COLD REPLACED BY JANUARY THAW
After a cold period late this week into the weekend, there is a strong signal on all the modeling that mid-January will not be that cold...in fact it may be quite mild. This is consistent with our winter forecast which talked about January being milder than December (relative to average).
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