Winter Preview Continues

Now

Partly cloudy, windy, cold. Persistent winds kept last night's lows from being quite as cold as expected, but temperatures this afternoon have had a hard time maintaining the upper 40s in most of the Washington metro region. By mid afternoon, National was 46°, and Dulles was 44°. The highs were: National 48°, Dulles 46°, BWI 46°. The northwesterly wind gusting frequently over 25 mph has also brought drier air along with the cold; dewpoints are mainly in the low 20s with even a few upper teens. The nearest precipitation on radar consists of some snow flurries over the mountains of western Pennsylvania.

Tonight and Tomorrow

Cold overnight, then increasing clouds and milder. The drier air along with diminishing winds should bring lower lows tonight, near 35° downtown ranging to some upper 20s in 'burbland. A weak "clipper" system diving southeastward from the southern Great Lakes tomorrow will produce increasing clouds and somewhat milder temperatures by tomorrow afternoon with highs 49-53° and a chance of light rain or snow showers late in the day or at night.

For the outlook through the rest of the weekend and towards Thanksgiving, scroll on down to Matt's post below.

Winter Outlooks

• Matt reviewed Bob Ryan's winter outlook from last night in his earlier post.
• According to an on-air promo, the WUSA-TV, channel 9, outlook will be on the 5pm newscast tonight.
• Stay tuned here for the CapitalWeather.com winter outlook, coming soon.

Mediarology/Climate Corner/Political Science Trifecta

In what may be some kind of a Guinness World Record, 3 out of the 6 front-page articles in today's WaPo involve climate science and related policy:

• "Calif. Court Rejects SUV Mileage Rules" (above the fold): "A federal court in California yesterday rejected the Bush administration's new fuel economy standards for light trucks including SUVs, ruling that the government failed to take into account the effects of carbon emissions and their possible link to global warming."
• "Katrina, Rita Caused Forestry Disaster": The forest destruction caused by Rita and Katrina "was so massive that researchers say it will add significantly to the global greenhouse gas buildup -- ultimately putting as much carbon from dying vegetation into the air as the rest of the nation's forest takes out in a year of photosynthesis." (According to the article abstract in today's issue of Science Magazine, the storms caused "mortality and severe structural damage to ~320 million large trees totaling 105 teragrams of carbon, representing 50 to 140% of the net annual U.S. forest tree carbon sink.")
• "Scientists Fault Climate Exhibit Changes": "Some government scientists have complained that officials at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History took steps to downplay global warming in a 2006 exhibit on the Arctic to avoid a political backlash, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post."

Programming note:PM Update will be off next week. Have a great Thanksgiving, everyone!