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Joe Lundberg's Weather Blog

Puny Cold

Jan 30, 2012; 11:16 AM ET

Monday, 11:35 a.m.

You know it's a mild winter when an arctic cold front comes through, complete with a snow burst, and you can't even get a below-normal day out the deal. What kind of puny cold is that?

Chicago was +2 Sunday. Pittsburgh had their morning low of 22 being a degree above average, and if they reach 36, that's the normal high. That won't be a problem. Many places northeast of there have had too many clouds behind this front and too much wind overnight to allow temperatures to get anywhere close to the normal low, which means the daily average by default will be above normal.

And now it's getting shoved out of the way by a broad warm front and a south to southwest flow of much warmer air that will send temperatures toward record levels on the Plains this afternoon, across parts of the Ohio Valley tomorrow and the East on Wednesday. Yes, the air mass is that mild. This means the current snowcover, which, by this winter's standards, is rather extensive, will look a lot different in a couple of days:

That snow you saw with the 'arctic' front in the past 24 to 36 hours from around Chicago all the way through Pennsylvania and into parts of New England will be wiped out in short order in the next couple of days.

A storm will move across the northern Plains with little moisture tonight and tomorrow morning then bypass the northern Great Lakes later tomorrow into tomorrow night. As it moves across northern New England on Wednesday, there will be some snow, mainly over the high ground, of upstate New York and northern New England, but not any farther south. There probably will be very little, if any, severe weather on the southern end of the cold front attached to this storm as it moves across the southern Plains and the lower Mississippi Valley. There's just so little contrast between the budding warmth and increased humidity ahead of the front to the somewhat cooler, drier air behind it.

Of course, you've heard me say on many occasions that you don't need it to be very cold to get it to snow, just cold enough. That phrase may get invoked late this week and into the weekend from a system that will quietly slide through the Northwest on Wednesday then cut across the central Rockies on Thursday. Of course, that will mean some snow in the Rockies, though not a lot, and certainly not nearly as much as they would like to see.

By the end of the day Friday, a storm will have formed over eastern Texas, Louisiana or Arkansas, depending upon what model you want to believe, and the overall timing of this feature. Here's the 0z GFS take on in for Friday evening:

Clearly, the air around this thing is not arctic in nature. Not even close! However, it may get cold enough northwest of the storm to see rain change to snow. That's a concern from Nebraska to Oklahoma, and from Colorado and maybe northeastern New Mexico to Missouri, even the Ohio Valley this weekend. All the while ahead of the storm, it will either be near record warmth, as in tomorrow into Wednesday, or just much above normal Thursday and Friday.

I'm not at all saying this is going to be known as a snowstorm - I don't believe it will be. What I am saying is that despite the mildness of the pattern, it can still snow under the right conditions, and those conditions may well be met with this Friday into Sunday storm as it moves and develops from the southern Plains and lower Mississippi Valley and tracks toward the Northeast.

The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of AccuWeather, Inc. or AccuWeather.com

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