Weekend storm, then more cold

I've heard people focus on the forecast for warmer temperatures this weekend, but they might be missing the bigger story of what's ahead for the Charlotte region.

Yes, it looks as if we'll get a three-day moderating trend from the brutal cold that has covered the Carolinas this week. High temperatures Friday will climb into the upper 40s, and with 55-degree readings Saturday and Sunday, it'll seem almost balmy.

But a big storm system will be crossing the East this weekend, and another surge of very cold air will follow the storm. It looks as if next week's temperatures will be every bit as cold as this week.

This week's weather is the coldest air in the Charlotte area since an arctic outbreak that stretched from mid January to early February in 2009. It dropped to 9 degrees on Jan. 17 that year, and there were several morning lows in the sub-20-degree range.

The big storm system this weekend appears as if it will follow a track north of Charlotte. That will keep any chance of snow to our north, but it means places in the Ohio Valley, the Middle Atlantic, and the Northeast could get walloped by heavy snow and wind. We'll get a better idea about that in the next few days.

Here in the Carolinas, heavy rain could fall, especially late Saturday and early Sunday. Once again ... we'll have a better idea on the timing and amount of precipitation in a few days.

Then behind the system, cold air will pour in again. High temperatures next Monday will remain in the 30s, and more of the same seems likely for next Tuesday.

No let-up in the cold pattern can be seen for the next two weeks, actually.

Those Big Winter Storms: A little more than a week ago, I wrote about computer-generated forecasts (from the GFS model) that indicated a chance of a major winter storm in the Carolinas for Dec. 8 and then again around Dec. 13.

As I wrote at the time, the long-range computer models are notoriously unreliable, and that is being borne out. Tomorrow is Dec. 8, and it'll be clear but very cold. The Dec. 13 storm (that's next Monday) seems headed for our area a day or two early -- as a rain-maker, not a producer of freezing rain or snow.

I've fallen victim to looking at long-range forecasts myself, and this is another reminder that we can't get too excited about what a computer says will happen two weeks down the road.