While conditions overnight Wednesday-Thursday were cloudy, clearings in the canopy revealed a full moon, which readers might have spotted as it rose Wednesday evening.

Thursday morning will see a continuation of the cloud, with the sleet and snow mostly confined to a central band running across the country from the west coast of the mainland, to the "east coast" at Peipsi Järv. Ida-Viru County in the far northeast will also see sleet, snow or rain or a combination of all three.

Morning temperatures are mostly a degree or two above zero, except for the same pocket of air above Lääne-Viru County that prevailed on Wednesday, Võru County, and also Saaremaa.

During the day as noted, the sleet and snow will spread to envelop most of the mainland, Võru County excepted, with the precipitation mostly to fall in the form of rain on the islands and in the west.

A southerly breeze of 1-8 m/s will blow, making it less windy than earlier in the week. Daytime temperatures will be between 0 and +3 degrees.

Looking ahead to the first days of 2021, average temperatures both day and night will drop around a degree every 24 hours, bringing it to -3C on average on Monday, January 4, and a couple of degrees below that at night.

New Year's Day itself will see temperatures hover around the zero mark, but with little precipitation, though the cloud remains. There will be more of a chance of snow on Saturday, January 2, thinning out again after that through to the new week.

If the temperatures seem cold, one statistic to bear in mind, ERR's weather service reports, is values recorded on New Year's Eve 1978, where a temperature of -42.6C was recorded at Narva weather station.

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