It seems like these two towns are far apart, at least in my brain, and I suppose they are. It’s a 603 mile drive, lasting for one long day. We’ll set a pace of 64.2mph, thanked, in no doubt, by the fast drivers of Michigan.
Lebanon, Pennsylvania
Low pressure is still spinning over the St. Lawrence Seaway, and it doesn’t look like it will be motivated to move before we are ready to travel tomorrow. Fortunately, isn’t going to be rich with moisture, and we will be in the car, able to avoid the cooler air the low pressure brings in. Some of the flow coming off the lakes could lead to some clouds and fog on the western faces of the Appalachians of central and western Pennsylvania. Mostly cloudy skies will continue through Ohio and Michigan, but they won’t scrape the surface like they could in Pennsylvania. Kalamazoo will be cloudy and seasonably cool tomorrow evening, but a turn around is around the corner.
This May forecast takes us from western Montana to the Hudson Valley of New York. Usually, I try to think of things that places have in common, and frankly, all I’ve got is that the second letter of both towns is the same. They aren’t close on the map, either, requiring a 4 day drive, with the 4th day especially long, to cover the 2416 driving miles between the towns. We’ll move at a pace of 69mph or 552 miles a day, so we will get the most out of the drive too. It’s going to take this long to get from Missoula to Kingston at a fast pace. World’s apart.
DAY ONE (Monday)
Missoula, Montana
Montana is a gigantic state, and we only ever seem to traverse it east to west or west to east. Our drive on Monday, of course, will be west to east, and we still won’t make it out of the Big Sky Country. High pressure is building in the High Plains, with a little bit of moisture on the back end of the ridge butting up against the foothills of the Rockies. We should leave early enough that we will avoid any rain, but the first whispers of clouds will be popping up for the day in and around Missoula, but the rest of our drive in Montana will be under blue skies. We’ll nearly make it to Glendive, Montana, before we turn in for the night.
DAY TWO (Tuesday) Low pressure is going to get organizing in the Lower Mississippi Valley and moving north to the Great Lakes. This increased organization in low pressure will encourage more stable cold air to move in behind it. Eastern Montana, North Dakota and northern Minnesota will be clear and dry. We will reach Avon, Minnesota, just west of St. Cloud before the day is through.
DAY THREE (Wednesday) It will be a narrow window between the large system moving into the Great Lakes, and another developing feature behind our route, moving out of the Dakotas into Minnesota and Iowa through the day. We’ll keep just ahead of system, but behind the larger one ahead of us, and voila! A wonderful day. We’ll get through the Twin Cities and Chicago, all the way to La Porte, Indiana. I’ve made a similar drive before, and it is a long one indeed.
DAY FOUR (Thursday) A slow moving band of light precipitation left over from our trailing weather feature will start to be wrapped into a low pressure center developing in the southeastern US. This will mean less organization and slower progression. There will continue to be a threat of rain just off of our rear horizon, but it will mostly be clear ahead of us. When we hit the Appalachians, the rain will stall, and we should be in clearer and clearer air the further east we head. Downstate New York should be in good shape by the time we arrive.
What a lovely, winding mountain drive we get to take this week, running from Fort Collins to Kennewick. It will take two mountain filled days to get from Colorado to Washington, covering a road distance of 1035 miles. This will mean a pace of 67.7mph, thanks to a route that eschews large population centers. The first day will be longer, and will cover 541 miles of the interior west, leaving a shorter day to enjoy the scenery in the Pacific Northwest.
DAY ONE (Friday)
Fort Collins, Colorado
The two most magical words to any road tripper concerned about the weather are going to apply to our Friday drive. “High Pressure” It will be pleasant and seasonably warm as we hit 4 states on Friday. Most of the time will be spent in Wyoming, a considerable amount in Utah, with our endpoints starting in Colorado and Idaho. You will be able to see for miles in Juniper, Idaho, in the southern part of the state, and the destination for our first day of travel.
DAY TWO (Saturday) Low pressure arriving from the Gulf of Mexico will not be as cooperative as the high pressure from Friday. Not much precipitation often finds its way inland, so we won’t see heavy precipitation, but we will certainly see some rain between Caldwell, Idaho, a western suburb of Boise, and La Grande in northeast Oregon. Subsident air on the lee side of the Cascades will clear things up for us once again as we arrive in Kennewick. It will probably be clearer and a little more crisp, but what else do you want in the high terrain?
All right, everyone, we’ve got a road trip coming. The drive from Anniston to San Antonio will cover a day and a half and 923 miles. We’ll net around 542 miles on our full day at a pace of about 67.8mph, and having a big day of Texas driving to finish things off.
DAY ONE (Wednesday)
Anniston, Alabama
Things are looking pretty good for the southeast, thanks to a boundary implanted in the southern Gulf. Precipitation won’t be able to filter south as far as Anniston, or really any part of our route. It will be uncharacteristically cool in Alabama or Mississippi, and you will probably find people in Egan, Louisiana, the destination for Wednesday night, in layers when we arrive.
DAY TWO (Thursday) Surface high pressure is going to drift further to the east on Thursday, and for the first time this season, as far as I remember, a moisture rich return flow will follow the west end of the ridge. Some showers and low clouds will drift into central Texas fairly early in the day. Most noticeably when we step out in San Antonio, the humidity will have arrived.
It takes less than an hour to get from Louisville to Elizabethtown. The real intrigue is whether or not you want to take a more westerly tact through Fort Knox, but really, it’s just a 44.6 mile drive at a pace of, as I’m sure you guessed, just over 60mph. Let’s knock out this commute.
Louisville Kentucky
By tomorrow morning, a lost batch of moisture in the Ohio Valley may or may not touch off some showers in western Kentucky. That’s only if the GFS gets it right, because other outlets are pretty dry. We’ll respect the venerable GFS though, and suggest clouds will be possible on the drive down to Elizabethtown.
The Masters start tomorrow in Augusta, and if you are a local, I bet it’s not your favorite time of year. So why not get out of town, say, by driving as far as you can in one long day. It will take almost 12 hours to get from Augusta to Decatur, covering about 744 miles at a pace of about 64.5mph. It’s definitely going to be an adventure!
Augusta, Georgia
Low pressure in the mid-Mississippi Valley is rapidly occluding, which means it is slowing down and weakening. As a result, it’s not going to clear the route by the time we get moving, but it’s also not going to provide a lot of heavy weather as we drive on Thursday. There will be some rain and isolated thunder with the tail of the front in the high terrain northwest of Atlanta to about Murfreesboro, Tennessee. At that point, we will get into a dry slot, which will be cloudy and glum, but OK for driving. The dry slot will last for the rest of the day, though the further north, and closer to Decatur we get in while driving in southern Illinois, some light rain becomes more and more likely. So don’t go any further north than Decatur, I guess, is what I’m saying.
They are only two states away, but at opposite ends of those big Prairie states. What I am trying to say, is that the distance between Rapid City and Topeka is a little bit longer than I expected. Most of it is on an interstate, so the 686 miles will pass at a pace of 67.3mph. I will spare you the math, that’s a 10 hour drive.
Rapid City, South Dakota
I don’t want to sound too overdramatic, but this drive will be a race against time. An area of low pressure moving out of the southern Rockies is headed right toward Topeka. Our route will go north of the northern most fringe of the rain and then east of the easternmost fringe of rain on Thursday. The rain will finally reach Topeka after midnight on Thursday, which means our drive will be dry, but our day in Topeka will not be.
West Texas to Western Maryland. I’m not sure there is a whole lot in common between the two locales, but maybe more than one would initially suspect. It’s a three hour drive, covering 1526 miles. We’ll move at a pace of about 67mph. The first two days will be the longer of the two at 536 miles, with the last day coming at only about a 7 hours drive. Barely anything to worry about.
Day One (Sunday)
Lubbock, Texas
Texas and Oklahoma, along with much of the rest of the middle of the country, are going to see a cold front move through overnight tonight. It’s going to really slow down south and west of St. Louis, and throughout a lot of the day, particularly after we cross the Red River north of Wichita Falls, we will be traveling in the wake of the front. There will be some wind and a little bit of rain on the back end of the feature, and I’m not fully confident we will ever get out of it on Sunday. Fortunately, after we arrive in Big Cabin, in northeastern Oklahoma, things will trend drier, and we won’t have to worry about it on the window all night. Boy, Big Cabin… I hope there is some sort of place to stay in Big Cabin.
DAY TWO (Monday) High pressure will build over the Great Lakes behind the system moving through overnight tonight, bringing cooler temperatures back to the area. Nothing extraordinary, mind you, but perhas back down to normal through Missouri and Illinois, before we pull in for the night in Monrovia, Indiana, the last exit before the Indianapolis metro.
DAY THREE (Tuesday) The cooler weather will rotate back up towards the North Pole, where it belongs, but the clear skies will remain. Some westerly wind may lead to a few clouds over the higher terrain in West Virginia, but it will be pretty more than impactful on our drive. Cumberland will be dry when we pull into town.
It’s been a long time since we put together a road trip. It’s for the best, as the world hasn’t been quite so navigable of late. Our drive this week will cover three days, with the third day lasting quite a bit longer than the first two. It’s 1794 miles from the New Jersey coast to west Texas, and we will cover that at an aspirational speed of about 66mph. Hopefully, we can get 532 miles out of the first two days of the trip.
DAY ONE (Thursday)
Ocean City, New Jersey
A quick little feature is shifting out of te Great Lakes today, and will pass the mid-Atlantic coast overnight tonight. By the time we start rolling on Thursday, high pressure will be strengthening over the Ohio Valley and upper Appalachians. Sunny skies, though entirely too cool for much windows down driving, will be on the order throughout our drive from the coast to our day one waypoint, Columbus, Ohio.
DAY TWO (Friday) The next area of low pressure is going to move from the southern Plains and pass nearly entirely south of our route on Friday, rendering the better part of the drive dry. Towards the very tail of the day, though, an inverted trough will phase with an upper level wave from the Upper Midwest. This will produce clouds and a bit of light precipitation across a large tract of the mid and upper Mississippi Valley. This will include Missouri, and we might see a few flakes west of Rolla. We’ll stop for the night on County Road J south of Powellville, Missouri on Friday night. Don’t expect a wild nightlife.
DAY THREE (Saturday) Any precipitation we see overnight will be insignificant to grassy areas, but it may make for some slick spots early on. Temperatures and sunshine will lead to wet and eventually dry roads pretty quickly. Expect good conditions through Oklahoma City, before it might get a little bit dicier. A bit of development is expected along a boundary in east Texas and Oklahoma, and some light rain showers are possible from there to about Wichita Falls. It will get dry again, I suspect, as we turn westward again, and on to Lubock.
You can’t get much ore “middle of the country” than this, can you? Lincoln and Kansas City are less than 3 1/12 hours apart by car, and 195 miles if you check the odometer. The drive will drill down to a nice, tidy 60mph for a pretty brief Wednesday drive.
Lincoln, Nebraska
The real show in the country is an area of low pressure moving through the southeastern US, but a slow moving inverted trough will dangle north into Missouri through most of Wednesday morning. Guidance universally hangs on to a batch of snow between Nebraska City, Nebraska and St. Joseph, Missouri, which accounts for a sizeable chunk of our route. The day will start clear and will end on a positive note, but the middle of the drive will be slower than I’m sure we would prefer.
