Traveling For Thanksgiving? Looks (Mostly) Great Nationwide

Fortunately, for the vast majority of Americans, Thanksgiving
travel won't look like this this year because there are
no large storms on the horizon.

It seems like every Thanksgiving, when people are traveling all over the country to talk turkey with their far-flung families, there's a big storm mucking things up in much of the nation.

Not this year.

Most of us are going to have a quiet Thanksgiving travel week, but of course there are a few exceptions.

Broadly, there is a general west to east air flow across the country, with no big southward dips or northward leaps in the jet stream.

That means no big storms can form, since there's no real opportunity for a wannabe storm to scoop large amounts of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico. And there's no big opportunity for Arctic air to plunge way south, which would set up a temperature contrast to spawn a big storm.

Instead, there are just little moisture-starved features zipping along, mostly along the northern tier of the United States.

That means not much precipitation, if, anywhere in almost all of the nation. It'll be rather chilly or the most part in the northern third of the country, but not extremely cold. The south and west of the country will be generally warm, especially in the southwest, say, southern California, Arizona and those areas, which could see record high temperatures over the Thanksgiving holiday.

Many of us will tune into the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York, and conditions look good there, too. At parade time, it will be sunny and chilly, with rather light winds so the giant inflatable characters in the parade will behave and not blow away.

One trouble spot would be the Pacific Northwest, where on onshore flow will probably bring a fair amount of rain and mountain snow, which would affect road travel and perhaps delay flights Wednesday.

It looks like some Gulf of Mexico moisture will head toward Florida so the Sunshine State isn't lookintg particularly sunny this Thanksgiving.

On Sunday, when a lot of us will be traveling back home, it looks like the same weather pattern will be holding, so I don't expect huge problems then, either.

Locally, here in Vermont, a cold front will zip on through, mostly Wednesday morning. We'll get some rain showers, changing to snow showers, especially in the mountains. There might be a few slick spots, mostly in the higher elevations, but no big mess.

Thanksgiving Day itself (when I travel from St. Albans to Rutland, Vermont) will have quiet weather, so if you have to drive somewhere in the Northeast, don't worry.

Safe travels, everyone and Happy Thanksgiving week!