Things are looking pretty good for our region in terms of weather for travel and the holidays. We kick it off with the weather today. Locally, we are going to have a mix of sun and clouds over the area. We are still dry at the surface with a light east wind. However, there is a little more moisture now in the upper levels. High pressure is centered just to our north.

For right now I’m thinking that we’ll be partly to mostly cloudy this morning with mostly sunny to partly sunny skies during the afternoon. High temps should be able to warm to near 50 degrees. That hinges off the amount of sun we get this afternoon.

There will be good weather for travel in the region. There will also be a lot of good travel weather over the eastern third of the country.

There will be some rain over parts of the Midwest. That will impact Chicago and St. Louis. Unfortunately, there has been some heavy rain and flooding over parts of California and Arizona. That continues today.

Tomorrow we’ll still be dry in our region. The rain over the Mississippi River Valley will move northeast…not east.

There will be some heavy rain and thunderstorms over parts of the Deep South and the Plains States. There will be some snow over the Rockies. Temps locally will warm up a little bit. It should be very nice out with high temps in the mid 50s. We’ll be partly cloudy. It should be nice weather for travel in the area as well.

We’ll be dry on Christmas Eve both during the day and the evening. High temps will rise to the upper 50s. This will be close to average, but it will be way above average in areas to our west.

We’ll be partly cloudy here. However, there will be a lot of rain over the central U.S.

We’ll still be dry on Christmas Day. It is going to be mild with high temps aiming for near 60 degrees.

This definitely won’t be the warmest Christmas on record. That award goes to 2015 with 79 degrees. We’ve had a couple of mild Christmases since, but that’s the record.

The coldest Christmas on record was 1983 with 16 degrees. I tend to favor the colder weather myself. I remember the Christmas of 1983….in Illinois. I think we had high temps in the negatives. It was a rough drive to Grandma’s house that year. That’s for sure.

We will have some scattered rain showers on Tuesday. Highs will be in the upper 50s to near 60. It shouldn’t rain all day. However, rain is likely for most of Wednesday. That could become widespread for a time. That would definitely impact travel. We’ll have updates on that over the weekend.

Happy holiday and safe travels!

Meteorologist: Jeremy Wheeler