HOLIDAY TRAVEL WEATHER & CHRISTMAS DAY ICE

Written by: Brian Neudorff

It may not be the day before Thanksgiving but many people will be traveling between now and New Years. AAA estimates that 87.7 million Americans will travel 50 miles or more from their homes today through Jan. 3. Weather will obviously play a large roll in people's travel plans.

Across Western New York, the Mid-Atlantic, and New England travel should be pretty good between now and Christmas Eve. There are areas of light lake effect snow coming off of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario but shouldn't cause too many headaches.

The big story will be the strong winter storm and blizzard conditions possible in the Central & Northern Plains, Upper Midwest, and Western Great Lakes. This will cause major travel problems from Omaha to Minneapolis and possible problems with an icy mix in Chicago.


Closer to home, our travel trouble looks to be on Christmas Day. Over the last 24 hours there have been some improvement if you will in the forecast. The models slow the arrival of the rain. That could good news for Rochester and many places in Western New York. That is because that could allow surface temperatures to rise above freezing before the rain arrives. Of course some of the valleys in the Southern Tier could still hold below freezing temperatures and the counties to the west and south where the rain could arrive first.

The worst of the potential ice looks to be east and southeast of Rochester. If you are traveling into the mountains of Pennsylvania or east towards Syracuse or Albany Christmas Day that is where things could get icy.

Biggest problem with a forecast like this is how the models deal with the shallow layers of cold subfreezing air that what we will have in place. They may be warming us up to quickly so there are still some finer points that need to be tuned before Christmas and the tuning will continue into Christmas morning.