By Skip Rigney

A cool and dry Thanksgiving week is in store for us here in south Mississippi.

Family gatherings with a large crew of kids will appreciate the fact that the youngsters will be able to play outdoors Thanksgiving Day, improving the acoustics indoors to a decibel level at which the adults can carry on normal conversations.

However, children and adults will want to have a jacket or sweater, especially for the morning and early evening hours on Thanksgiving.

A cold front passed last Saturday night bringing us our coolest days so far this fall on Sunday and Monday.

After a brief warmup to the low 70s today, a reinforcing surge of cold air will move into the Gulf South on Wednesday and Thursday, continuing the cool stretch.

Temperatures on Thanksgiving morning are forecast to begin in the middle 30s, then gradually climb to a maximum near 60 in the early and middle afternoon under bright, sunny skies.

Soon after sunset on Thanksgiving, temperatures will fall back into the upper 40s.

Those looking forward to exercising their shopping prowess on Friday won’t be hindered by the weather.

The day will likely be at least five degrees warmer than Thursday, and more sunshine is forecast.

The Chamber of Commerce can continue to be proud of the weather right through the weekend with sunny days and clear nights forecast for Saturday and Sunday. It will be chilly in the mornings before warming to near 70 each day.

One of the things we can be thankful for this week is a large, spinning center of low pressure centered three to five miles high in the atmosphere above eastern Canada.

Rotating around the center of the low, several troughs of low pressure will sweep through the upper atmosphere above the eastern one-third of the United States this week.

This means that the winds above us here in the Gulf South will be from the northwest, blocking Gulf moisture and providing us with several reinforcing shots of cool air at the surface.

All of which is a recipe for a cool, dry week.

For those traveling to other locations in the Deep South for the holiday, only those whose plans take them to Florida east of Tallahassee are likely to see rain.

If you happen to be one of those rare Pearl River County residents who will be traveling to other parts of the U.S. for this holiday, the only really nasty weather is forecast to occur in the Pacific Northwest.

A long ribbon of extremely moist Pacific air, which meteorologists call an atmospheric river, is gushing ashore this week in Washington, Oregon, and northern California.

It’s a safe bet that very few turkeys will be fried in Seattle this week, because their forecast keeps the chance of rain between 80 and 90 percent from today through Thursday night.

The atmospheric river will produce snow at the higher elevations.

For those few hardy souls who live in the Olympic and Cascade Mountains in Washington state, they will at least have the advantage of being able to keep their turkeys frozen as long as needed.

For example, the predicted snowfall on the southern slope of Mount Rainier is mind-boggling. Seven to twelve feet, that’s right, feet not inches, is forecast to accumulate from yesterday through Thanksgiving.

One more reason to be thankful to live in Pearl River County.