If you’re like most folks, with the Fourth of July Holiday weekend ahead, you are probably hoping for some great summer sunshine and warmth. But, if you’ve been following the weather forecasts this week, you have likely heard me say more than once that "we are into a tough pattern right now", and that we are!

Our weather has been on a real rollercoaster the past few months. We had some 90 degree heat way back in April, then wet, then too dry with brush fires, and now too wet again. "The weather can’t make up its mind" as my Mom used to say.

Now we have the long Holiday weekend coming up and yes, it remains a tough pattern. In short, a large upper level storm causing a large area of generally unsettled conditions covers most of the northeast and the Great Lakes, and storms this large, built 20,000 feet into the atmosphere are very slow movers. We have been thinking that this sluggish storm would ease up on us this Saturday and Sunday as it finally slides east of here, and I still do think that, but totally dropping any mention of a shower over the weekend, I just can’t do that yet.

What makes matters potentially worse is that some of our computer models are now showing this storm retrograding, and if this happens, well…it’s not good. What does this mean? Basically it means the large storm moves east of here into New England, completely comes to a halt, and actually begins drifting back west towards us!

If this actually happens, then cloudiness and showers begin coming at us from the east and north this weekend instead of the south and west like they are now.

So here is the meteorologist’s problem that we face for this weekend. We want to give you the forecast as we see it now, talking about improving conditions, but also alert you that this is not clear cut and "things could still go wrong" due to that whole retrograding thing that the general public really doesn’t understand or even care about for that matter. It’s a tough line to walk. We want to be optimistic about this weekend, but at the same time realistic.

I, like you, wish we had a clear cut answer on the weather for this weekend, but at least as of this writing, we just don’t. It would certainly be a whole lot easier if all our computer models indicated a large area of dry, fair weather high pressure building right over us this weekend for great weather! It would also be a whole lot easier if all our computer models indicated a large, slow moving storm right over us the whole weekend and we told you with near certainty that the weekend would be a wash out! That’s not the case either!

For now, I will maintain my more optimistic thinking for this weekend hoping that silver lining remains for Saturday and Sunday. Meanwhile, I will continue checking later computer models to either bolster my optimistic thinking for this weekend, or force me to become even more realistic that, maybe the weekend isn’t looking so good. Let’s hope not! Stay tuned and hope the optimism continues!