Adding to Yesterday's Ideas
The surge of warmth through the southern Plains, the storms slamming the West Coast and the threat of the major disruptive white Christmas giving the East a storm highlight week one in the weather. Temperatures have been taken up across the South, more or less held in line across the North and the East in week one, and then taken down in a lot of places in week two.
I am nervous about the week two temperatures being as cold as the GFS has. The latest AO forecast is showing a trend toward neutral in the longer term.
This makes me nervous about the GFS ensembles being this cold over the major population centers of the East from days 8-14. Let's look at the day-14 GFS ensemble:
While there is massive blocking across the North, it's a very different pattern in Europe from what we have now, and troughs in Alaska and the ridges northeast of Hawaii have me wary of the models cold idea. The weekly European is colder looking back farther west, but I have problems with them. Last night's Canadian, though, is all-in with the cold to start the new year, it's day 16 showing the PNA pattern classic for cold over the East.
In the shorter term, a lot of weather this week. The front part of the week has the slamming of the West Coast, but after this week, the more standard areas farther north get it, rather than the south.
The week one precipitation shows the heavy precipitation on the West Coast and the track of the major winter storm, now adjusted south on the GFS (I don't believe it, I think this hits all the way to New England as the pattern is different from the one that just missed).
While week two pulls precipitation north in the west as the ridge fires up a bit more.
My worry about it being warmer can be easily seen in the snow-cover forecast. For 00z the 30th, the snow cover is way to the south.
Certainly supporting the cold through then, but watch what happens by the 5th:
This is similar to what is about to happen in northwestern Europe, where the coldest 30-day period ever measured in some places will come to an end around Christmas with a major thaw there Christmas to New Years.
The moral of the story is that we should keep the cold through this 15-day period, but be wary of changes to warmer after. It's been a December to remember.
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