Potential snowstorm brewing for Thanksgiving? Here’s what forecasters are predicting.

UPDATE: Multiple rounds of rain this week, including on Thanksgiving
There’s no need to panic. There’s no need to worry about weather disruptions to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Forecasters say it’s too early to get a good handle on a potential storm system that may bring some snow or rain to the eastern U.S. on Thanksgiving Day.
But some meteorologists are laying out different scenarios for what could develop next week — one of the busiest travel weeks of the year.
Forecasters from AccuWeather say nothing is locked in at this time, but they believe there is some potential for accumulating snow in parts of the Ohio Valley and Northeast region of the U.S. on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, which “could result in widespread disruptions for travel and holiday festivities.“
AccuWeather says its forecasters are looking at two different scenarios — one that would be more snowy and another that would be more rainy.“The first scenario involves a slow-moving storm, meaning potentially longer-lasting impacts from the Tennessee and Ohio valleys through the Northeast,“ AccuWeather said in a storm report on its website on Friday.
“The second scenario sends the same storm farther south and off the Carolina coast through Thanksgiving,” the private forecasting company noted. “This would be a less intense storm with rounds of rain and even some snow which could spread from the Tennessee Valley eastward to the East Coast.”
The National Weather Service’s main forecast office in New Jersey is taking a very cautious approach to the Thanksgiving forecast because it is very early and there are a lot of moving parts involved.
“As we turn our attention to the end of next week, most of our available model guidance indicates a low pressure system developing and affecting the East Coast around about Thanksgiving Day into that night,” the weather service said.
“However, given that this is still several days out, there’s lots of uncertainty regarding the system`s strength, track, and overall evolution including timing,“ the agency said.
The weather service said the storm track will be a key factor in whether the system will bring rain, snow or mixed precipitation to New Jersey and the Philadelphia metro region. Based on projected air temperatures at this time, it might not be cold enough to support a large snowstorm.
The weather service’s New York regional office, which covers New York City and five counties in northeastern New Jersey, says it’s far too early to make reasonable predictions about next week’s storm system. And even the major computer guidance models are far from agreeing on the storm’s timing, strength and impact areas.
Some early computer guidance suggests the center of the storm system could end up moving anywhere from the Gulf coast to eastern Pennsylvania, the weather service noted.
For now, the weather service is predicting partly sunny skies in New York City on Thanksgiving Day, with a high near 45 degrees and a 40 percent chance of rain showers. The big Thanksgiving Day parade kicks off at 8:30 a.m. Thursday in Manhattan.

Thank you for relying on us to provide the local weather news you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a voluntary subscription.
Len Melisurgo may be reached at [email protected] or on X at @LensReality.