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Forecast Discussion:
Today is a normal day. Mostly clear skies with temperatures within a degree or so of normal will greet you outside your front door. Nice! High pressure at the surface, a bit of down-slope flow (Figure 1) and a ridge aloft (Figure 3) are responsible for this normal-ness.
With big fires fanned by the dense blobs of cold air/high pressure in the center of the nation, out on the West Coast, I thought we should keep an eye on atmospheric smoke again. Figure 2 shows a bit of smoke leaking over the top of the western ridge into the Dakotas, but nothing has made it here, quite yet.
The longer range forecast:
A check on the Friday PM and Saturday day snow storm (Figure 4) shows snow totals backing off according to the GFS. Now we are only in the trace to 1 inch zone. We'll have to keep an eye on it. (Note the NAM is still giving us 2-3 inches for this weekend, so it is not definite that this is going to fade out.) In the meantime, daytime temperatures will melt most of the snow away this week.
