First Alert Weather: Dry Thursday, then eyeing some weekend lake effect

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WHEC) – We’ve been enjoying a lovely stretch of rare November sunshine, but all good things must come to an end, right?

Clouds will tend to slowly thicken up tonight, but enough clearing will allow temperatures to drop toward freezing tonight. Thursday will feature a mostly cloudy sky and a breeze out of the southeast at 10-20 mph, but we’ll stay dry.

That changes Thursday night and Friday morning. A wave of rain with a strong storm system stalling over the Great Lakes will develop after midnight Thursday, and move east Friday morning. That will actually leave much of Friday dry, with a return to some sun. But we’ll feel a cooler breeze out of the west/southwest, and temperatures falling from the 50s into the 40s and staying there through the weekend and the first half of next week.

The weekend: this weekend will have a much more classic November look and feel, with darker lake effect clouds, a chillier breeze, and off and on lake rain and wet snow showers. Outside of a minor coating to an inch of two in the higher terrain south of Buffalo, and perhaps a coating in the Bristol Hills, we won’t see any accumulating snow this weekend.

The coolest air should move into WNY Monday and Tuesday of next week, with the continued threat of passing wet snow showers. Again, no real accumulation is expected out of this, but everybody is fair game to see some snowflakes again by early next week.