Boy, you glance at the national forecast map and it looks like that big low over the Midwest and all that moisture it's drawing north off the Gulf will get here eventually and bring us some serious rain. No such luck.

We remain in a kind of bubble of high pressure and under sunny skies today. Forecasters say that by the time the bubble heads out to sea tomorrow, the low passes to our north, and the cold front sweeps through on Friday or Saturday, it won't have much rain left to offer. They're posting only a 20 or 30 percent chance of showers late Wednesday into Thursday. That increases to 40 or 50 percent chance of thunderstorms Friday before the odds fall again and sunshine returns on Sunday. I guess we'll take whatever we can get.

Throughout the period we're looking for unseasonably warm highs in the 70s, perhaps even reaching 80 degrees on Wednesday. And after things clear on Sunday, there's no more hope for rain until late next week.

And all that crowding of highs and lows as the shove by will set us up for some stiff winds Friday and again Saturday.

But enough about the forecast. Did anyone else spot that beautiful crescent moon just after sunset last night? I had an email query asking me what the bright "star" high above the moon was.  It was no star. It was Jupiter, the brightest object in the southwest in the evening these days. Hard to miss. Here's what NASA's New Horizons mission found at Jupiter last March.

And if you're up early, don't forget to look for brilliant Venus in the east before dawn. That's Saturn just to the left and slightly above Venus, and the bright star Regulus just above. Look high overhead before the skies brighten too much and you'll spy reddish Mars, which is brightening nightly toward a close approach at "opposition" on Christmas Eve. We'll be writing more about that next month.