If you were surprised by the overnight rain and the cold, damp morning you found on your doorstep today, you were not alone. I had this in my inbox this morning:

"Frank, I enjoy reading your blog. How could the forecasters have totally missed this storm we're in the middle of. I live on the eastern shore and it's been raining since Monday afternoon!! As of Sunday night, the forecast called for no rain on Monday or Tuesday. How could they have been so wrong on this one??" -David

Indeed, Salisbury has had 0.3 inch since dinner time last night. We’ve had more than that here on the Western Shore. Here are some other measurements from around the state.

I still have yesterday morning’s forecast on my desk. Updated at 10:19 a.m., it called for "mostly cloudy" skies overnight and today (Tuesday), with a "slight chance of showers" Tuesday night.

Instead, we had 0.4 inch of rain in the gauge out on the WeatherDeck this morning, and nearly that much here at The Sun. BWI-Marshall reported 0.43 inch.

So what happened? I called Brian LaSorsa, a forecaster out at the NWS office in Sterling. He said the Sterling forecasts began to reflect the approaching rain late in the day yesterday. The problem was this:

As cold air pushed south through the region yesterday, a wave of low pressure began to form along the front and rapidly intensified off the coast. The counterclockwise flow of air around the low began to sweep cool, moist air off the Atlantic, triggering the rain overnight. And this morning's dank chill.

The intensifying low wasn’t a surprise, LaSorsa said. But "it was originally expected to be further offshore ... The track has been a little further west, and that allowed for the rain to come back further south and west into our area."

Here’s AccuWeather.com on the topic. Here's the pretty cool radar loop.

As the coastal "nor’easter" heads north into New England, it will draw cold air and strong north winds our way. Wet snow is expected along a corridor from Quebec, to eastern New York State and northeastern Pennsylvania. AccuWeather.com is forecasting as much as a foot of snow in part of the Adirondack mountains in Upstate New York. Blizzard conditions are possible in the Poconos, Adirondacks, and the Green and White Mountains of New England as winds reach 60 mph amid wind-swept rain and snow.

There is a wind advisory in effect for our area through late tonight. Winds gusting as high as 41 mph will be out of the north. That will blow a lot of water out of the bay, pushing low tides 1 to 2 feet below forecast levels.

There will be chances for more rain and even snow showers tonight and tomorrow. It will be too warm at the surface for any accumulations here, but cold air aloft could produce enough flakes to be noticed.

Farther west, in Garrett and western Allegany counties, they’re looking at real snow - a Winter Weather Advisory calls for 1 to 2 inches of accumulation today and another 1 to 3 inches by tomorrow.

Check out this forecast. Ho-hum snow for those mountain folks.

Once all this gets past, by late tomorrow, we can look forward to milder weather. High pressure arrives with sunshine for Thursday and Friday, and temperatures will rise back into the 60s.

WeatherBlog readers: Exasperated by how long it takes your comments to process? I feel your pain. The blog platform The Sun uses is very slow, and frequently breaks down on this end, too. It was down all morning today. We are in the process of replacing it with one that actually works. We hope.

I’m told that all Sun blogs will begin migrating to a new system around Nov. 15. The only difference we should notice is that things will happen faster. (Although your comments will still have to be noticed, read, approved and posted by us. That is, me. We have no 24/7 decency police.) Thanks for your patience.