Weather Headlines
Tuesday January 29, 2002
A very healthy spring/winter storm to deal with in the short term. This
storm will bring about a pattern change, though still nothing severe in
terms of cold.
A mixed bag of precipitation has developed today over the Central Plains. A
healthy combination of shallow cold air in the North and record warmth in
the South will help spin up a sizeable storm in the Southern Plains later
today that will turn to the NE. There are a variety of winter weather
watches out from Kansas, Missouri , Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois. More can
be expected through the Great Lakes and New England later in the week.
There will be snow with this, but also some potential for significant
freezing rain as well. The storm track is expected to run from NW Texas to
just South of Chicago then Western New York. To the South, this is a rain
event with some thunderstorms as well. This storm will serve to collapse
the strong ridge that has been in place over the Eastern U.S. I certainly
expect a drop from the record highs of recent days, but nothing in the
earth shattering cold category. In fact, the raw numbers from the MRF have
trended warmer the last few runs. Since we don't have a thick snow cover to
tap from, I believe the period of cold setting up will not be as harsh as
what we saw in late December. As all of this is going on, some of the chill
that has invaded the West will be lifting out. I don't see a big run to
above normal with a surface high still sitting over the plateau region, but
it should not be as cold as the last couple of days.
While the talk in recent outlooks for the 6-10 day period has centered on
cold, it is interesting to note the new 6-10 and 8-14 day outlooks from the
NWS still have a warm bias to them. There is not a big snow cover on the
ground, a split flow in the jet stream is expected and the polar vortex in
Canada continues a slow retreat. With all of that as a backdrop, the slight
positive departures look reasonable to me. We may however crank out a
"Clipper Type" storm next week in the Great Lakes and New England. These
can sometimes be more prodigious snow makers than the big "Plains type"
counterpart we are currently seeing. This is especially true if the air
flows over the Lakes at the right angle, something I won't even try to
predict this far out. Other than this system, I don't see much action in
the 6-10 day period. However, there is some potential for another storm to
emerge out of the SW just after this.
For the period Tuesday January 29 through Saturday February 2, expect the
following temperature trends:
Average 4 to 6-degrees below normal: Intermountain West, Desert SW,
California, Pacific NW...
Average 1 to 3- degrees below normal: Plains and Rockies...
Average 4 to 9-degrees above normal: Great Lakes, Mississippi Valley...
Average 10 to 15-degrees above normal: Ohio Valley, Mid-Atlantic,
Northeast, Gulf Coast, Southeast...
Andy Weingarten, Meteorologist APB Energy / True Quote