Hello everyone, Jared Smith here with your Charleston weather forecast for Friday, December 29th, 2023, and New Year’s Weekend.

Cooler air will be blowing in on Friday in the wake of a cold front.

Expect temperatures in the low 40s to start the day, but the ongoing cold advection will keep highs suppressed to the mid 50s in the afternoon.

It’ll be a breezy day as high pressure builds in.

Gusts 25 to 30 mph are not out of the question during the height of the day.

A generally dry atmosphere will keep skies predominantly cloud-free, though a fair-weather cumulus cloud or two are not totally out of the question.

Another chilly and breezy day is in store for Saturday.

Lows bottom out in the mid 30s, but wind chills will make it feel even a few degrees cooler than that.

Partly cloudy and mostly sunny skies will once again be the rule, with perhaps a bit more of a fair-weather cumulus field than we saw on Friday.

High temperatures will once again run just in the mid 50s as freezing levels will remain around 3,000 feet.

A warming trend begins on Sunday, though.

We do start the day in the mid 30s once more, but high temperatures will run a few degrees warmer than they did on Saturday as the core of the cold air departs to the northeast, and sunshine becomes a touch more unfettered as a warm nose building in around 5,000 feet will keep the fair-weather cumulus field from really getting going.

Winds will be a little calmer too as the pressure gradient relaxes somewhat.

There are no weather concerns beyond needing a jacket for ringing in 2024 at midnight on Sunday.

The clear skies with perhaps a thin veneer of high cloud cover will persist, but there’s zero risk for any rain.

Be safe and have a great time! The warming trend is going to continue into Monday ahead of our next cold front.

We start the first day of 2024 off around 40 degrees or so, and will warm to the low 60s in the afternoon.

Cloud cover will be increasing though, and there will be the risk for a few showers primarily after sunset as the front arrives.

Once it gets through, temperatures dip back a little below normal for Tuesday and Wednesday, and then the next rain chance arrives Thursday.

Finally, a climate note, Monday’s forecast high in the low 60s, if it verifies, and it probably will, would snap a streak of three consecutive New Year’s Days with a high temperature of 70 degrees or higher, and this includes when we tied the record high of 80 degrees back in 2021.

And in fact, for 4 out of the last 6 years, we’ve had a high temperature of 70 degrees or above on New Year’s Day.

The two exceptions?

2020, when the high reached 62 degrees, and 2018, when the high only reached 34 degrees as we were getting ready for a snowstorm.

And that was Charleston Weather Daily for December 29th, 2023.

I’m Jared Smith.

Visit CHSWX.com anytime for your latest Charleston weather conditions, alerts, and forecast updates.

Thanks for listening, and I’ll talk to you tomorrow!