There’s a full-scale January thaw underway across the Lower 48 while Alaska shivers in it’s coldest spell for 5 years. As is typically the case, some of the Lower 48’s mildest winters has seen some of Alaska’s coldest.
As stated in my winter forecast back in November, the likely absence of the North Pacific warm pool or warm blob would likely present a different upper air pattern this year and this winter has very much been back and forth and we’ve also seen the first real stormy winter in California since the drought arrived in 2010/11.
There is good model agreement and consistency that the low heights over Alaska and positive heights over particularly the Midwest extending up into Hudson Bay will reverse within the next 10 days.
The GFS ensemble 5-day mean upper heights and 2m temp anomalies show the return of the Alaska ridge, eastern US trough.
This 500mb pattern is backed up by the GFS 10 to 50mb forecast and SSWE expected over the next week to 10 days. We could have a major arctic outbreak on the way from the N Plains to Southeast to end Jan/begin Feb.
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