Thanksgiving travel troubles ... and really cold air

We've had relatively quiet weather for the past several months, since the heavy rain and flooding of June, July and early August came to an end.

Now all that is preparing to change.

It appears as if the eastern United States, including the Carolinas, will be paying attention to weather forecasts for the next several weeks. If you can believe the computer models (and they seem to be relatively consistent on this), you can pack away the shorts.  Get the winter coats ready.

It all starts Saturday night and Sunday, of course, with the arrival of some very cold air. High temperatures Sunday probably won't get above the upper 30s in Charlotte, and don't be surprised to see some places in the area with lows around 13 to 15 degrees Monday morning.

Next up will be an old-fashioned Gulf of Mexico winter storm system.  We haven't experienced many of these in recent years, but such a critter will develop Monday and push across northern Florida and southern Georgia.  If temperatures were a few degrees colder, we'd be looking at a winter storm.  Instead, prepare for cold rain, and possibly plenty of it.

After that, the big question is how quickly the storm system departs, and which way it goes from here.

If it's still raining on Wednesday, that will have an impact on Thanksgiving travel for Carolinas residents. Some forecasts indicate the rain could end as snow in higher elevations.  That's another bad scenario for travelers.

And will the storm system push out to sea, or go up the East Coast?  If it's the latter, then big travel hubs like Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and Boston will be getting drenching rain and gusty winds on Wednesday. That won't help the airline schedules.

Once the storm system is gone, things won't change a lot. Cold air will remain.

The longer-range computer models show a big dip in the jet stream, with cold air mass after cold air mass dropping from Alaska and western Canada into the eastern half of the United States. The models differ in predicting whether the heart of the cold air will affect the central U.S. or the East.  But it appears nearly certain that there will be cold air around.

Will the southern part of the jet stream remain active, bringing storm systems across the Gulf of Mexico and into the Southeast?  That's something to watch.  An active southern jet stream added to the cold air is a big deal along the East Coast.

And some of the long-range models show some ridiculously cold temperatures for the Carolinas for the period around Dec. 6-11.

Meteorologists could be kept very busy over the next two or three weeks, at least.