Thursday, January 16, 2014

Winter Roars Back?


Keep the comments coming on the post below.  It's interesting hearing your thoughts on the Weather Channel vs. DIRECTV debate. Also, don't forget to participate in the poll on the right side of the blog.  

I promised a post about the POSSIBLE upcoming cold later this month.  This will be a brief post and I hope to have something very special for you later today or Friday morning here on the blog.  For those who are TRUE weather geeks, you WILL enjoy.  No doubt.  If you aren't, I think you will find the information coming very interesting.

The data continues to point to cold pattern for the last half of January, especially the very end of this month into the beginning of February.  Remember, cold does not mean snow, but at least you have 1 necessary ingredient right?  Will this all come together?  Only 1 person knows for sure and it isn't me.

This might look greek to you, but I'll explain it.  This is a level in the atmosphere called 500 millibars.  It's very useful for several reasons, but i want you to notice how the river of air ( jet stream)  in the upper air is arranged.  See that black closed line over eastern Alaska? This is a very amplified pattern.  That's a strong ridge of high pressure aloft.  To counter that, you can see the trough over much of the central and eastern U.S.  That black closed line near Hudson Bay in Canada is the Polar Vortex.  Yes, the Polar Vortex.  Remember, the (PV) isn't anything new, it's just new to the national media.  It's a feature that has ALWAYS been around.  When it shifts or gets displaced southward, it gets cold and sometimes VERY cold.  It's what I like to call "winter".  Anyway, this should set up and send several shots of very cold air southward.  This map is valid on Sunday, January 26th.

Don't take this literally!!!!! This is the surface temperature forecast for the same time period.  The white line is the freezing line and it's located in northern AR.  There's a very tight temperature gradient in our region which will divide the arctic air and the milder air to the south.  Where this sets up exactly is impossible to nail down this far out. However, I just want you to notice the vast cold pool of air located across the northern U.S and Canada.  That's BITTER COLD.  So here's what needs to be answered:  how far south will the cold air push if this is correct?  We may be able to shed more light on this later today into tomorrow with a new blog post.  Stay tuned.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Try to move that freeze line a bit North of the Canadian border please.

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