Parts of US may experience warmest Christmas on record, feeling like May
With cold air on the retreat from all but the northern tier and mountains of the West, the opportunity is there for some incredible warmth around the Christmas holiday, which may have some wearing short sleeves outside.
Cities like Wichita, Kansas, and Oklahoma City could break records for their warmest Christmas ever recorded this year.
As storms wreak havoc in California and cause trouble in the Northeast, a large bubble of warm air will build over the south-central part of the United States into Christmas Day with room to expand. The result could be one of the warmest Christmases on record.
As the jet stream bulges north over the middle of the nation, temperatures will trend substantially upward—a significant shift from just a week or two earlier, when a weakening polar vortex directed massive amounts of cold air southward from Canada.
"Close to two dozen states, from parts of the Rockies to portions of the Appalachians, northward through much of the Plains and part of the Midwest, will experience temperatures that are 15-30 degrees above the historical average by Christmas Day," AccuWeather Meteorologist Alyssa Glenny said. "At this level, the warmth will be comparable to late April or early May."
Christmas Day is likely to set the week's record for the most tied or broken records. Some of the cities included on the list are Tulsa, Oklahoma; Wichita, Kansas; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and Amarillo, Texas.
Oklahoma City set a record high of 77 on Tuesday, smashing the record of 72 set in 1982. Record-high temperatures will persist into the weekend.
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Glenny noted that several locations in the middle to south-central region of the nation will have nights so warm they may challenge record low minimum temperatures. The dates of the records vary from location to location, but some date back to the mid-1900s and beyond, meaning that this could be the warmest Christmas in a lifetime for some people.
The warmth is forecast to expand to the east later in the week, causing the extreme positive temperature departures to extend into the Southeast.
As a precursor and perhaps a limiting factor to the warmth will be the risk of stubborn low clouds and fog from the Gulf Coast to the Ohio Valley, Appalachians and Atlantic Coast. Fog could potentially become a widespread problem for motorists and airlines, leading to significant delays.
The same pattern that brings warm air into the region will also transport moisture north and east from the Gulf. Where the low clouds fail to break, temperatures may be held back 10-20 degrees.
Because of the frequency of clipper storms that will dive from the Upper Midwest to the Northeast through this week, any warmups will be brief to non-existent in between, as a wedge of cold air that develops may be difficult to get rid of.
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