It's a beautiful warm day today, perfect for brunch on 9th Avenue in midtown (a quintessential Manhattan experience). High pressure is bubbling down from Quebec, bringing deep blue skies and just a hint of an onshore breeze.

Usually warm temperatures come with winds out of the south or southwest. But this high, although to the north, is not Arctic in origin. Rising upper air temperatures and melting snowpack are allowing the sun to operate at nearly full force today, so we're sitting in the low 50s. (Near the coasts of the Atlantic Ocean and Long Island Sound, onshore breezes have developed, keeping temperatures there in the 40s.)

As for the stalled ocean storm, it's still spinning near Bermuda, having been stuck there for several days now. But not much happened here despite lots of threatening forecasts. It's a good lesson that unrealistically detailed long-range forecasts, pegged on pie-in-the-sky scenarios rooted in highly unusual setups, are an unwise venture.