My Feb - March Forecast for the SE

As you know...you have heard signs of a colder pattern change coming. I can somewhat agree with that although I think it will be short lived.The NAO/AO are already moderately negative.... I expect our area to end January on a frigid note as a deep trough with accompanied snow drops down into the Southeast. This pattern will be locked in place for at least the first half of Febuary and this will be the coldest around here its been all winter.








With the fading NINA and a pronounced NAO block in the baffin island to greenland location you will get that deep trough here in the united states. With 2-3 winter threats. Enjoy the first half of Febuary because I think the PNA and EPO will start to overwhelm the pattern by Feb 20th.





The old SE ridge will start flexing his muscle then... and that will spring us towards spring weather.






Thats not to say we wont get a bowling ball ULL come rolling out of Texas and produce snow in Late Feb or Early March..but by March the 15th cold winter weather will be all but gone.





Current NAO/AO is heading torwards the tank




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Severe Weather Likely In Late January

Being that there is a substancial warm up coming in about a week or so the chances for severe weather will be higher than normal for this time of year...so I went to looking for something to track and wa la..look what the euro model is showing at Hr 240.

Its still a long ways out but what some models show is definately a severe look with arctic air just pouring down into the western US and moist tropical like air being sucked up into the warm sector in the eastern US. This would cause fireworks where those two airmasses butted heads..not only that but that type of storm could definately flip a pattern completely over.

This storm could possibly bring the change that us winter wx lovers have been looking for since winter began. But there have many things that have fooled us on that particular aspect.

Alberta Clipper Round Two

Snow accumulations will be likely tonight/early morning as an Alberta clipper system will quickly track across the area tonight and producing light snow accumulations. Snow accumulations of a dusting to two inches will be possible.

Clipper To Bring Snow To The TN Valley

This setup is pretty unique being that the current system will continue to pull away and its NW flow off of the lakes will combine with the clipper trying to tap the gulf. This was a very confusing aspect of this timeframe and lead me to believe that this would be a pure NW flow event several days ago..but that is not the case. Anyways it will be interesting to see how this evolves on radar. At any rate I think the plateau area will do extremely well with this one as they will change over very quickly but everybody in east TN looks to get in on the action although places in SE TN may get downsloped pretty badly.

I would think that most of the snow will stick to the roads and ground with the very strong cold advection being modeled. Look for temps to drop like a bat out of hell tomorrow evening making for an exciting night.

Snow will be in the air tomorrow

A vigorous upper level disturbance will swoop thru the region on monday and bring a period of snow to the tennessee valley. I expect the snow to accumulate up to 6 inches in the highest elevations of east TN. The plateau counties and the northern valley could also see an inch or two...while most of the valley could see a dusting but I wouldnt rule out a little more than that due to the expected intensity of some of the snow showers and the long duration of the event. These snow showers will be accompanied by strong NW winds that will usher in the coldest air of the season...Glad to see the prospect of some real winter weather finally

Good Signs Of The Long Awaited Pattern Change

Good Evening and Happy Holidays

The weather lately has been pretty boring unless you like rain (It's certainly not my cup of tea) if you are a regualr reader of this blog you have probably heard me speak of a pattern change to more winter like conditions in several different posts and each time they never seem to stick and that has been due to the lack of blocking signals.

The pattern of late has been one of a "here today and gone tomorrow" type but several well trusted models are in general agreement that this is gonna change abrubtly in the new year. Blocking signals are starting to show up strongly in the NAO and PNA regions....lets not confuse the 500mb signals with the teleconnection signals because they are two different signals and dont always support each other. I expect a strong cold front near New Years that will be transported by what looks to be a clipper type system and if enough cold air is already in place we might get to witness one of those rare snow squall lines that set up along the cold front of some clippers during favorable conditions.

Several forecasters originally called for a cold winter but several of the same long range forecasters have since changed their tune to more of a warmer winter. Not me...im sticking with my guns and I fully expect the pattern change to happen around New Years. The AO has been off the charts positive for nearly two months and that is about as long as that usually happens so our saving grace is that it went positive early in fall and now has nowhere to go but to more neutral or negative values.


Toot

Winter Cancel? What?

Im growing tired of the cancel winter calls I am hearing...meteorological winter so far has not been a torch by any means...its been near normal to slightly above tempwise so far this December... Calendar winter has not even started yet and yeah that does have meaning..it's called winter solstice. With that said.... long periods of a tanking AO and a NAO block are not the normal December conditions here either... no matter how bad you may want to see those conditions...Wild swings in temps and patterns are more normal at this lattitude during the period of seasonal change from fall to winter.

Now I realize that people (including me) were expecting the neg NAO/AO to happen in December and it hasn't but it seems people have been spoiled by the last two winters and somehow think that cold and snowy is the normal pattern in December...its not!! People seem to forget that this is the southeastern united states and most unelevated places around here only average one or two days of an inch or more of snowfall during winter. Just remember there has already been two snow events already in the south even though they might have not been in your backyard.

Anybody making such broad statements as "cancel winter weather in so and so month" is completely wacko..I dont care who they are or what forum they post on. Nobody can make such a broad statement like that with ANY accuracy. If they cancelled winter weather for the months of November and December they are already wrong for parts of the mid-south... as they have already had two winter events no matter how long it may have stayed on the ground.

When there is not much confidence in any guidance it's pretty hard to argue with January climatology (which would be our snowiest month) especially if your basing your argument on relatively new teleconnect indices in the long range. People seem to think its allright to trust forcasted teleconnections in the long range but not model graphics when neither is very accurate for some reason. So no thanks...I will stick with climatology at this point