Weather Headlines
Monday January 7, 2002
Weather pattern looks much more quiet ( and warmer) for the coming week.
Models continue to attempt to load up arctic air in Western Canada
The weekend winter storm for the Eastern U.S. turned out to be fairly
impressive. As expected, the I95 corridor was mostly rain with the snow to
the West. This system is moving out to sea quickly today. The NW winds will
drive some cool air all the way to Southern Florida early in the period,
but a big time warm up in the Northern Plains will spread East as the week
unfolds. The deep trough that has set up shop over the Great Lakes and
Southeast the past two weeks will be much weaker over the next few days.
This will allow the warmer Plains air to spread East and diminish any
intensity in storms. In fact, the only system of note this week is an
"Alberta Clipper" type mid to late week that will drop into the Lakes and
NE and possibly bring some snowfall. The westerly flow South of this will
warm those areas up. In the West, the temperature trends remain a bit above
normal. One moderate intensity storm is coming into the coast early this
week, but it will die rapidly as it runs into the upper level ridge sitting
over the Interior West.
The 6-10 day period may see us come full circle as the Great Lakes trough
is expected to deepen again during the period. This seems reasonable, but
once again intensity of arctic air coming into the trough is very much in
question. If one follows the MRF and Canadian suite of models, there could
be some legitimate arctic air about to invade the Northern Plains by the
end of the period. For now, my response is " I've seen this before". The
European models were off a little early this winter, but have done very
well the last couple of weeks. They do not show the same intensity of cold
as the other models, so for now I prefer that solution. We likely will turn
colder over much of the East next week and may even go back below seasonal
norms, but for now I don't see it any colder than the past two weeks.
For the period Monday January 7 through Friday January 11, expect the
following temperature trends:
Average 4 to 6-degrees below normal: Southeast?
Average 1 to 3-degrees below normal: Gulf Coast, Mid-Atlantic...
Average 1 to 3-degrees above normal: Northeast, Ohio Valley...
Average 4 to 9-degrees above normal: Great Lakes, Mississippi Valley,
Southern Plains and Rockies, California, Intermountain West, Desert SW,
Pacific NW?
Average 10 to locally 20-degrees above normal: Central and Northern
Rockies, Central and Northern Plains...
Andy Weingarten, Meteorologist APB Energy / True Quote