An Historic US-Canada Snowstorm & Following Coldwave On The Way?

The models continue to throw the BLUE paint bomb on a large swath of the Lower 48 with the latest 6-10 day off the Climate Prediction Centre showing a particularly cold look. This way this is shaping up with a powerful ridge pumping all the way to Alaska and the fact the Arctic Oscillation is pretty strongly negative, combined with what the models are persistently showing, this could be a near historic upcoming 6-10 day period from the Plains east.

A storm system currently exiting the Great Lakes and pushing towards the Northeast will get a good shove by a more vigorous low dropping south out of Canada. It is this storm system which has the cold air behind it and what we’re seeing now is decent snows breaking out along the Front Range of the Alberta Rockies. The vigorous upper trough and energy associated with it will merge cold, dry air with mild, more humid air and this sets the stage for a decent early season snowstorm Wednesday for Montana, extending down into Wyoming, perhaps spreading into the western Dakotas. The chill Thursday through Saturday wonit be particularly noteworthy but it’s once this strong system pulls into the Great Lakes where the trough deepens into the Midwest where the true chill comes down. Sunday into the early and mid part of next week could and should see parts of the Upper Midwest shivering in day and night temperatures some 15-30F below normal with highs struggling to hit freezing and lows plummeting well into the teens widely with areas falling into the single digits perhaps.

Here’s the latest from the AccuModel for Thursday. Notice this run showing 1-3 inches of accummulation widely across Montana.

Here’s for Friday. Notice this model showing the majority of Montana covered by SEVERAL inches of snow as well as ALL of Alberta and a large swath of south/central Saskatchewan all the way to Hudson Bay with significant accummulations showing up over Northwest Ontario. Drive a potent lobe of early season arctic air over top of this snowcover and youre likely to see record cold.

Ok, now what’s impressive about the below chart for Saturday is not only the fact that there’s still the snow on the ground across a very large area but a HUGE area of Ontario is covered in a widespread 2-6 inches. Again, this would allow minimal modification of the cold air coming down and I really think we shouldn’t underestimate the intensity of cold IF this was to pan out. Impressive!

Here’s the average upper heights for the next 6-10 days.

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