A rainy and (at times) stormy night is ahead for central Indiana as a cold front approaches.

While scattered thunderstorms are impacting portions of central IN as we type this (6p and looking at you Whitestown), more widespread showers and embedded thunderstorms will blow into town late tonight. Here’s an idea of what the radar may look like around 10p.

For most neighborhoods, expect 0.25″-0.50″ of needed rain tonight into the wee morning hours Thursday. There will be localized heavier totals through central Indiana.

Temperatures will be cooler Thursday, but will remain above normal- generally topping out in the middle and upper 60s in the afternoon before falling Thursday evening. Cooler air will be with us to close the work week (upper 50s to around 60° for most for highs Friday).

Our next storm system has it’s eyes on the area Tuesday evening into Wednesday, but looks less significant when compared to 24-48 hours ago. We’ll continue to keep an eye on things.

GFS ensemble members aren’t terribly “excited” about our next storm potential next week.

There continues to be a great deal of interest around colder times and a pattern change around mid-month. We want to reiterate a couple things:

1.) Wholesale significant pattern changes can (and normally do) wreck havoc on medium and long range data. To our fellow weather friends out there who love to look at run-to-run operational data, expect wild swings as the pattern transition gets underway mid month.

2.) While we’re fully in the camp of a major reversal to cold, we caution the initial pattern transition will likely feature a “step-down” process before shifting to more of a true winter-like pattern (likely complete with plenty of storminess; hello snow lovers) from the Thanksgiving to Christmas period.

Finally, our complete 2016-2017 IndyWx.com Winter Outlook can be found here.