Challenging Record Highs?

CLICK ON THE TAB "WINTER CONTEST 2012-2013" IN THE NAVIGATION BAR ABOVE TO SEE ALL OF THE CONTEST ENTRIES AND TO FOLLOW IT ALL WINTER.

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FOLLOW ON FACEBOOK: TODD YAKOUBIAN

TWITTER: KATV_WEATHER

First of all, I am in the process of entering all the guesses into a spreadsheet for the winter weather contest.  There are almost 300 of them so it's going to take me a little time to complete all the data entry.  I hope to have it all done by Wednesday.  I'll post all the guesses once finished.

Meteorological winter starts Saturday, December 1st and I think we can challenge daily record high temperatures.  There is something to watch which may prevent this from happening.  Many times, as moisture returns, clouds can develop and they are stubborn to break apart.  This is the time of year when the sun angle is quite low.  This can prevent enough "mixing" of the air and lock some cloud cover in place preventing the full potential of the warming.  With that said,  it's still going to be quite mild with readings well above average by 10-20 degrees late this week.  It's going to warm, but the true extent of that warming is in question.

Where's the cold air you might be asking?  There's a ton of it, but it's all in Canada and Alaska.  There are NO signs it will surge south over the next 7 days and probably beyond.  I hesitate to say this, but there are signs later in December it may come south,  but DON'T COUNT ON IT YET.  You know the saying, fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.  I'll keep you posted if any "real" cold air heads south.

Here are the records starting this weekend:

                                    RECORD HIGH      GFS FORECAST (00Z TUES RUN)

Sat, December 1st         79 (1970)                   69

Sun, December 2nd       79 (1982)                   76

Mon, December 3rd      80 (2005)                   75

This is the GFS surface map late Saturday.  It does show a couple of sprinkles possible across western and northern Arkansas, but I bet this is most likely just going to be some cloud cover.  The black lines are isobars and notice they are oriented south to north around an area of high pressure located well northeast of Arkansas.  This will draw in a significant fetch of mild and moist air off the Gulf of Mexico.

The southerly flow continues Sunday.  Notice low pressure in the northern Rockies.  The warm and moist air continues to surge northward.  Much of the United States is well above average in terms of temperature

By Monday, the low pressure area is located in far northern Minnesota.  The isobars are more tightly packed which means the southerly wind flow is strengthened off the Gulf of Mexico.  There is a front trailing from that low in the plains.  It may push into the state Tuesday or Wednesday with some rain and thunderstorm activity followed by colder air.  However, this air will not be arctic and will not last long.