>Today’s Top Weather Stories
On Weather & Climate Through the Eyes of Mark Vogan

37 below zero over Alberta, Canada!

USA-CANADA GETTING BATTERED BY HARSH EARLY WINTER WEATHER, UK, GET READY! see Weather Talk below

 Graphic Courtesy of The Weather Channel

Graphic Courtesy of AccuWeather Pro

Some more snow and cold temperatures ahead
The Seattle Times

La Niña can be ‘tough nut to crack’

The Seattle Times

Vicious storm batters Northwest as travel ramps up
USA Today

U.K. Cold-Related Deaths Nine Every Hour Last Winter
AccuWeather News

Today’s Weather across America
From AccuWeather & The Weather Channel

Watch for Thanksgiving Wintry Mix in Pennsylvania, New York
AccuWeather

Stormy, Wintry December Awaits Northeast
AccuWeather

Extreme Weather to Snarl Thanksgiving Air Travel
AccuWeather

Weather Talk
By Mark Vogan

SCOTLAND TO SEE SNOW DOWN TO SEA LEVEL BY SAT-SUN IN MANY AREAS, CORE OF COLDEST AIR THAT WILL SETTLE OVER HEART OF NORWAY TO TAKE A RUN AT SCOTLAND NEXT WEEK! 

Many folks have asked me about whether they will see snow or not in their area. Put it this way, I will be surprised if it doesn’t at least snow in an area stretching anywhere from Dundee, Perth and across to Glasgow and down towards Dumfries by Sunday or Monday.. Accummulating snow across a broad expanse of the country looks possible!

Sticking snow is highly possible by Saturday or Sunday but I shall have details later in the week as to whether I’m confident in it being either snowy or just plain cold. Remember, IT’S NEVER TOO COLD TO SNOW, it’s just harder for the atmosphere to contain a decent amount of moisture when cold. In order for it to snow, there needs to be moisture available. The colder the air, the less moisture there is available and Arctic origin air masses are nearly as dry as those air masses that hang over deserts!

I continue to hammer home my point that as Norway and Sweden continue to “fill-up” with some of the coldest air currently available over the northern hemisphere and drops into a deepening trough over Scandinavia right now and the core of the cold going to push down over NW Europe by this weekend as a cross-polar jet feeds air from directly over the North Pole, down into Norway, Sweden, Finland and northwest Russia, a piece of this truely FRIGID early season Arctic air still looks to break off from the main vortex and swing our way. If this does happen folks from Inverness down to Perth, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dumfris WON’T SEE FREEZING for a few days next week and with potentially a few inches of snow covering these cities and many Scottish towns, nights under clear skies and this magnitude of Arctic cold overhead, nights could easily drop towards -10C or colder, even in urban areas, perhaps -15 to -20C over the Highlands. Of course that’s IF, the piece of frigid air breaks away from the main vortex that will drop down into Scandinavia. North America is also seeing truely brutal Arctic air drop into western and central Canada and the the West and North-central USA. Temperatures have plummeted to -37F at Bow Valley and Sundre in Alberta, Canada and snows have lambasted the Pacific Northwest with anywhere from half a foot in the coastal cities of Seattle and Portland to over 40 inches inland over the Cascades, Wasatch and Rockies! A 3-day snowstorm in the High Sierra of California from Sugar Bowl to Mammoth have seen totals of upwards of 80 inches of snow and counting! Lows this morning dropped into the 10s in F in Seattle and wind chills at one point this morning where registering a frigid 7-degrees in Seattle…

THE SCIENCE BEHIND AN EARLY SEASON COLD OUTBREAK OVER N. AMERICA AND W. EUROPE

This dump of extremely impressive early season Arctic air into the heart of North America and now western Europe is courtesy of a flip in what is known as the Arctic Oscillation. When positive, it bundles the Arctic air over the pole and in doing so, allows it to grow and mature within a dark, frozen, snowcovered, sunlight and heart starved environment. Allowing this air to remain in place in this environment, it allows the air to get much much colder than if it was allowed to spread out early and therefore weaken in the warmer and more sunfilled latitudes further south.

In the case of November 2010, the period of maturing has passed and now with the AO flipping negative, all the mature, brutal Arctic air has spilled southwards. With a negative NAO (North Atlantic Oscillation) also flipping negative, this has built a warm pool (ridge) northwards from the North Atlantic all the way up over Greenland, thus this forces the Arctic air into the troughs, the ridge has created. Both North America and western Europe are in the firing line of this Arctic air!

Don’t be fooled in thinking, that when your watching your Scotland Today or STV forecast that the 1-3C highs and -4 or even -5C lows late this week for Glasgow, Edinburgh, Perth, Dundee and Inverness will be the cold weather I’m talking about… I’m talking about NEXT WEEK.

If this materializes, the forecast for colder will likely then show up on your TV forecast by the weekend. You’ve seen it here some 7 to nearly 10 days in advance!

What’s Reaching Today’s Blogs?

NW Action: 166 MPH, -37 Degrees, 84 Inches of Snow
Jesse Ferrell, AccuWeather

Eastern Cold Not Quite Ready to Hit and Hold
Joe Lundburg, AccuWeather

Blizzard for the West. Severe Weather Wednesday. Long-Range Snow
Henry Margusity, AccuWeather

The Extremes of the Day

Today’s US Extremes
Courtesy of AccuWeather

High: 90 degrees at Edinburg, TX
Low: -22 degrees at Jordan, MT

Today’s UK Extremes
Courtesy of the Met Office

High: 50 degrees (10.1C) at Isles of Scilly
Cold High: 38 degrees (3.3C) at Braemar (Aberdeenshire)
Low: 26 degrees (-3.4C) at Kinbrace (Aberdeenshire)

Today’s Extremes here at my house

High: 42 degrees
Low: 34 degrees

Thanks for reading.
-Mark