For days we've been looking at nasty forecasts predicting rain, freezing rain, sleet and snow overnight and into Friday. But the setup was complicated and the results were never very certain.

 And so, as gloomy as it was this morning, except for a few sprinkles, and a few flakes, I didn't see any of the bad stuff on my drive to work this morning. Neither did many others. (Maybe the neighborhood buzzards were waiting to feast on the defunct forecast.

The National Weather Service has backed away from an earlier Winter Storm Watch and replaced it with a Winter Weather Advisory for western counties from Carroll out to the mountains. But a check on reports from out there finds little that looks like wintry weather worth a worry.

Even Mr. Foot is wearing a cardboard box over his head this morning, and manfully discussing his team's errors.

Forecasters at Sterling are pointing to cold, dry air flowing in from the north, driven by a high in Central Canada, and the low moving off Delmarva and out to sea more quickly than they anticipated. That all seems to have dried things out and cut off the precipitation before it ever really got started.

We have recorded a mere 0.05 inch here at North Calvert and Centre streets. BWI is reporting barely a tenth of an inch.

There's more wet weather ahead, however. After some sunshine on Saturday, clouds move back in with showers in store for Sunday and Monday morning. Highs will be in the low 50s - almost 10 degrees above the averages - so we don't need to worry about frozen stuff for the moment.

And by Tuesday the skies should clear for the balance of the week, but temperatures will cool back toward the seasonal norms. 

Speaking of averages, we have now passed the date of the coldest average daily temperatures for Baltimore. From here on, the averages begin their slow climb toward spring and summer.