Why No Storms, New Tool
These maps do a good job of explaining why it's cold but there are no storms in the East this week before Christmas.
In meteorology, what often happens is that the general state of the weather depends on the jetstream. These brutal winds high above the earth snake completely around the globe. When they bend, the weather moves.
This week, the jetstream is preventing storms from going west to east across the nation. They go up and over the Rocky Mountain states, then eastward in Canada. Because the East is under the dip in the jetstream, cold air that came down from Canada won't leave.
Later this week, the jetstream flattens and the first thing we'll notice is that milder air will rise into the West and be allowed to flow across the nation, warming the East, while arctic air is blocked to the north.
And then finally, by this weekend, we'll see storms start to approach the Northeast, on either side of the jetstream.
Right now, the DGEX and GFS computer models are drawing a complicated scenario for the Northeast this weekend. This includes an approaching storm from the South and an Alberta Clipper, but it still looks like mainly a rain event on December 26th, melting some of that White Christmas away. Then on the back side of the storm there is a chance of more of the white stuff.
Looking again at this week, I'd like to introduce a new tool that we are testing for our AccuWeather.com Professional site. You may remember the "model spreads" from this hurricane season, which showed expected tracks for the center of the storm from a variety of computer models. This product does the same thing for run-of-the-mill, non-tropical storm systems.
Looking at the picture above, which shows storm tracks for the next week from various models, it is clear that storms are getting blocked near the West Coast. There's no action in much of the U.S. until you get off the East Coast where storms are firing over the warm waters later this week. There are also some tracks in the Northeast which are coming later in the period as an clipper tries to come down (see last paragraph above).
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