1/5/2025 - KMCN

Current Weather Conditions: 

30 F reported at KMCN. Clear skies over GA with no precipitation in the vicinity. High pressure is currently still in place, helping to maintain clear conditions alongside low relative humidities. 

Forecast for January 5, 2025

A low of 38 F and a high of 53 F can be expected, with a slight chance of rain (20%). The GFS predicts that temperatures will increase as the warm air pushed by the mid-latitude cyclone is pushed towards GA towards the end of the day.

A slight rain chance is expected into the late / evening hours of Sunday as the approaching mid-latitude cyclone destabilizes the atmosphere and pushed the high pressure over the SE region out to the Atlantic. 

Wind conditions are also expected to stay calm to gentle throughout most of the day. As the mid-latitude cyclone approaches wind conditions can be expected to deteriorate, and begin to rise to a moderate breeze as we move into Monday.

Finally, cloud cover conditions are expected to remain clear during the overnight hours, but cloudy conditons can be expected starting around 7 AM in the form of scattered cloud coverage. Clouds can be expected to continue to move in throughtout the day, becoming mostly cloudy to cloudy by day's end. The heavy cloud coverage can be expected to keep temperatures elevated once the sun has set. 

I am defaulting to the GFS's estimations today as it is running very accurate estimations currently in both the current position of the mid-latitude cyclone's position and its temperature estimations. I did not look at the MOS due to Sunday looking like an atypical weather day for January, nor the ECWMF due to time constraints. 

Forecast data pulled from the GFS and the NAM.

FORECAST CHECK-IN:

My Forecast: Low: 38, High: 53, Slight chance of precipitation into the evening hours (20%).

Actual Weather Conditions:  Low: 26, High: 55, 0.05" of precipitation occurred.

The high is within acceptable margin, while the low is most definitely not.

I defaulted to GFS's temperature predictions here, which I definitely should not have. For some reason, the GFS does not seem to be able to accurately capture the low for the central GA region. This may have to do with precipitation being present.

Also, while my forecast for precipitation was techincally correct, it feels a little vague (especially since the time of day rain is reported is typically not saved). I will start adding expected precipitation amount to give myself a gauge of how accurate I was that day.