Due to the major Northeast US snowstorm I have changed the posting schedule today as you’ll have noticed. Europe video and write-up is usually before the US.
Our pattern has turned fairly monotonous once again. Back in that wet, windy and unsettled regime.
The system causing all the havoc on the other side of the Atlantic WILL impact our weather but it WON’T be a snow maker I’m afraid.
We won’t see scenes like this in Delray, Virginia early this morning.
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In fact this is not a particularly ‘cold storm’, it’s origins are more subtropical than arctic and it’s combination of geography and current pattern over North America that’s allowing this extreme snow event to be.
Low pressure riding NNE out of the Southern into Mid-Atlantic saw the transport of US of warm, moist Gulf of Mexico air. With a strong high over eastern Canada supplying the cold, dry ‘arctic’ air down to the Virginia-North Carolina border along with other, more complex ingredients, allowed for an epic snow event.
The main system now, the ‘coastal storm’ will slowly pull away from the US coast later today and shall loose all it’s wintry precip as the cold supply out of Canada is detached just like a hurricane looses intensity once over cooler water or land.
Notice in the below hemispheric view of the GFS 500mb/MSLP chart the trough over the eastern US isn’t the deepest or coldest and we have a fairly west-east gradient crossing the Atlantic. This shows that this storm system will run west-east en-route to Ireland and not plugging any arctic air and so we shall remain mild.
GFS ensemble shows above normal temps across central and western Europe over the next 5 days. Mildest since late December.
Thank or blame a recent cooling of the polar stratosphere which has resulted in the AO/NAO flipping back positive.
As you can see from the below GFS surface, the very East Coast US snow system should in fact be at it’s lowest central pressure to the NW of Scotland by Tuesday.
This could be a decent wind maker providing widespread gales and severe gales on west, northwest coasts.
A succession of Atlantic lows this weekend right through next weekend means an overall unsettled theme with further flooding issues likely through the remainder of January.
GFS QPF chart suggests a lot more rain to come over west facing Ireland, UK and mainland Western Europe now through January 31
See video for today’s discussion.
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