Above: Belleayre Mountain looking good on the first ski weekend of the season. The Catskills' three large ski centers -- Belleayre, Windham and Hunter -- all opened for ski season last weekend. Plattekill Mountain in Roxbury is slated to join them for the upcoming weekend, with a Dec. 7 opening day. 

Season's greetings, Catskills. It's that time of year again: The Thanksgiving leftovers are all but polished off, the Christmas carols have begun in earnest, and if you've got a pair of skis buried in the attic, it's high time you exhumed them. 

Above: Rainfall totals for the storm so far, posted to Facebook by the National Weather Service station in Albany around 10:30 a.m. Wednesday morning. 

Rainfall has been heavy in the Catskills during the storm that began Tuesday afternoon. Most areas in the region have received 1 to 2 inches so far, with localized rainfall of around 3 inches in higher elevations in Ulster County. Rain will continue into the afternoon, with about another half-inch expected to fall. 

A flood watch issued on Tuesday is still in effect for Ulster and Greene counties in the Catskills region, along with a portion of the mid-Hudson Valley and parts of New England.

Drivers should watch out for fast-changing road conditions. Through the afternoon and into the evening Wednesday, roads in the area may ice over as the temperature drops quickly and rain shifts to sleet and snow.

The Maetreum of Cybele, a former inn in Palenville that is now the spiritual home of a Cybeline Pagan group. Photo by Julia Reischel.

A group of Pagan adherents in Palenville won a major victory in a New York State appellate court last week, when a judge ruled that the town of Catskill was incorrect in denying the group a property tax exemption.

Under U.S. law, a religion's a religion, no matter how small. And as religions go, the Cybeline Revival is one of the tiniest. It's a monastic branch of Paganism founded in the late 1990s by local priestess Cathryn Platine, the Reverend Mother Battakes of the Maetreum of Cybele. The Maetreum -- a three-story former inn in the little Catskill hamlet of Palenville -- serves as the spiritual home of the Cybeline Revivals's handful of followers. Several followers of the religion live at the Maetreum, including Platine.

Above: AccuWeather graphic showing potential scenarios for a storm that's slated to move up the coast toward the Northeast next week, just in time for Thanksgiving. For more on that, see AccuWeather's Friday story about the storm.

Hang onto your Pilgrim hat: Forecasters say a couple of storms headed for the Northeast could combine forces to form an intense nor'easter by the middle of next week. Whether the storm takes the form of snow or rain depends on the track it takes, Hudson Valley Weather explains, but several major forecasting models are all predicting that a powerful storm is likely.