We did it! We survived the coldest Thanksgiving in modern history.
New England is experiencing the coldest Thanksgiving since at least 1987, and in many cases back to 1901. Though records don’t go back quite that far for most stations, it looks like the coldest Thanksgiving in the last few centuries was probably 1879. The record for today in Boston is 9° from 1879. But for most of us, today is as cold is any Thanksgiving that even our grandparents can remember. A couple of notable weather stations, the summit of Mount Washington, and the The Blue Hill Observatory, just south of Boston set daily, and Thanksgiving records. On the summit of Mount Washington 25° below zero set a record for the month of November, beating 17° below zero in November 1989. November 1989 was a white Thanksgiving with 10 inches of snow on Cape Cod.
At the Blue Hill whether Observatory the low-temperature of +9° broke the Thanksgiving record of 10° set on November 28, 1901. Many of the daily records for today are from November 22,1987. That was also a snow-covered Thanksgiving for much of New England. The cold high-pressure system that brought in this air mass, is going to pass overhead tonight, and then out to sea the next couple of days. Under a clear sky (the air does not get much cleaner because it’s from the North Pole) the moon is strikingly brilliant again tonight. And with the mostly clear sky and lighter wind, many locations may set record low temperatures again tomorrow, with low temperatures below zero in northern New England to 15 to 20° near the south coast.
Sunshine is our forecast for Black Friday, high temperature in the 20s, wind out of the southwest 15 to 20 miles an hour keeping the wind chill value fairly cold.
Warmer air comes in with increasing clouds on Saturday, rain is likely at night. But it may come in as sleet and freezing rain initially.
There after, we are in for several days of gray weather and occasionally heavy rain, that may transition back to freezing precipitation, and ultimately snow first in the mountains, then the hills, then perhaps even near the shore, as we have a multi-day coastal storm in the works. More on that as we get closer.
