Heater kicks in overnight
Temperatures hovered around 50 degrees as we turned in last night. That's pretty close to the normal high for this time of year at BWI. Maybe a bit mild. (The normal overnight LOW is 28 degrees.) Then, after midnight, warm air began arriving from the South, and the heater kicked in.
The mercury out at BWI jumped from 50 to 60 degrees between 1 and 2 a.m. Here at The Sun, it leapt from 50 to 59 degrees between 3:30 and 4:30 a.m. And it's been headed higher ever since - 63 at 11 a.m. The last time we broke 60 degrees at BWI was on Nov. 15.
Mild as it is, there's no record under threat today. The all-time high for Baltimore on a Dec . 10 is 72 degrees, set in 1966. The record low is 1 degree, set way back in 1876. The record high minimum is 49 degrees. So far, our low for the day is a shade warmer than that, at 50 degrees, but we can probably count on temperatures to fall late today, dipping well below 49 as a strong cold front drifts by and stalls to our south.
The forecasters out at Sterling are looking for a low tonight of 41 degrees. The front will go by late this evening, followed by more rain than we've seen so far (0.05 inch so far at The Sun), plus gusty winds.
Thursday will bring more rain, a colder, heavier rain, with daytime highs only around 40 degrees. The driver is another low that's developing in the Gulf. Here's the radar loop.
The storm is expected to move across the southeastern states and off the Virginia/Carolina coast. With the cold air moving in from the north and west, the low could generate mixed precipitation here early Thursday, especially north and west of the I-95 corridor, forecasters say. But it won't last long, turning to all rain in the lowlands, and an icy mix in the mountains to our west.
But as the storm pulls away early Friday, forecasters warn that the precip could switch back to snow or sleet west of I-95, at least briefly.
Behind all this soggy mess there's more high pressure on the way for the weekend. with sunny skies on tap Saturday through Monday, with highs rising through the 40s and into the low 50s by the start of the new workweek.
