United States

Blessed Tranquility

October 19, 2012; 1:30 AM

It looks like a spell of quiet weather is getting underway behind the storm system that caused the severe weather over the last couple of days, over 100 reports in all, 7 of them tornadoes. There might have been one more tornado in Deep South Texas this evening. But, behind the storm and trailing cold front, a cool dome of high pressure is settling in and will set up shop over the Southeast for a while.

So, a long spell of nice weather is setting up in the Southeast. It looks as though the high will stay anchored over the Southeast through the middle of next week. It will be on the cool side at first, but it will warm up nicely after that. There will be a few exceptions to the rule. First, we will have the front crossing the Florida peninsula today, which will mean spotty showers and thunderstorms. Eventually, an easterly flow will set up over Florida and that will result in some showers drifting into the peninsula starting on Monday. Meanwhile, an upper level low will be swirling over the Great Lakes and some spotty showers and thundershowers can sneak into Kentucky and West Virginia through tomorrow.

Back in areas west of the Mississippi, the high brought nice weather to most places yesterday, but the front still crossing Deep South Texas caused a few bad thunderstorms. The high, of course, will shift east and that means return flow will begin by tomorrow. So, the nice spell won't last so long back in Texas and Oklahoma. Most places will warm up quite a bit over the weekend, and it will get more humid, too. Also, an upper low spinning west of Baja California (it gobbled up what was left of Paul) will shoot northeastward over the weekend and stir up a little trouble early next week. So, watch for a few thunderstorms over West Texas and Oklahoma Sunday into Monday, maybe into North Texas Monday. There could even be a few strong ones.

Meanwhile, the tropics are quiet as well ... for the moment. The East Pacific is very quiet looking for now. In the Atlantic, it's quiet for now but it looks as though there will be some changes. Note on a satellite map, you will see thunderstorms growing gradually more widespread in the Caribbean and there's a bigger blowup east of the islands. The critter east of the islands is a tropical wave. That will likely be pulled north but in time it looks as though low pressure will form in the Caribbean by the middle of next week and a tropical cyclone of some sort might come out of it eventually. The model solutions make sense ... high pressure will be over the Southeast, eventually spreading out into the Atlantic. That is often a sign to watch out for the area to the south of the high. Meanwhile, the MJO is in Octant 1 and will stay there for a while ... favorable for development in the Atlantic. The good news for us is that by the time something might develop, we may be back to having an upper trough over the eastern U. S. (perhaps finally getting another chance for rain into the Southeast late next week with a front moving in), hopefully steering anything that does form well east of the East Coast.

The long range GFS shows an interesting setup from a storm in the East Pacific getting pulled into the Southeast. Very interesting and seeing an East Pacific storm forming in that time frame might be believable but the odds of it getting pulled into the Southeast that way are pretty long.

Time permitting, next post this evening; otherwise, Saturday evening. Y'all be good ...

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