For a good week now, the models and particularly ensembles have been showing the turn from cold to warm over the Ohio Valley and East but their increasingly showing a flip back in the 8-16 day. Since Christmas and New Year, I’ve been watching closely the stratosphere and the warming taking place. Despite models not seeing the cold return initially, their reacting well with the major event going on up in the arctic and so any warmth coming, no matter how strong it will be, the cold that follows is likely to be greater and I have already stated my reasoning for why I think this. The evidence is very much there. The +AO and NAO is very much living on borrowed time as the reaction to the warming within the polar stratosphere kicks in but remember the delay.

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While cold now across the Great Basin, Rockies extending into the Plains, this may be nothing compared to what’s coming in the next 7-10 days as ridging builds from north and east of Hawaii up into Alaska. Bare in mind that usually when Alaska is cold, it’s warm across the Lower 48 and when warm in Alaska, it’s cold in the Lower 48.

The residual cold where I am in New Jersey where it’s been generally in the 30s by day, upper 20s/lower 30s at night, this air will get replaced by increasingly milder air as heights rise. Mid to late next week could see highs well into the 50s across the Northeast, perhaps low to mid 60s for DC and Baltimore. I head down to Savannah, GA Fri-Sat and I wouldn’t be surprised to experience a day of 80 degrees but folks, it’s as the warmth really kicks in across the Eastern third, that the trough will deepen, heights will lower and the arctic air will get forced south from the arctic into the West. I stand by what I said several days that a major arctic shot will come into the West and Plains late next week. 20-35 below normal temperatures could impact an area from Reno to North Platte while 15-30 above normal is possible for parts of the Mid-Atlantic stretching up towards NYC, even as far as Maine.

The snowpack will significantly melt from the Ohio Valley to interior Northeast but despite warming up across New England, the 2ft snowpack is unlikely to disappear.

 

Don’t fret Easterners, the warming across the pole will bring winter back even to the East as well as the West. The West will not warm as the mean trough will hold in the West through next week but as the arctic door opens mid to late next week in the West extending into the Plains, it is this that will really pump the ridge in the East.

It’s as the cold drives into the West through next week, that we’ll see the AO and NAO start to go back to negative in reaction to the initial replacement of cold to warm in the stratosphere over the pole. The reaction doesn’t happen instantly but it takes time for the cold to reach down to the surface and then drive south. As the arctic opens up, this flips the AO from positive back to negative and it will go into the tank given the intensity of the stratospheric warming.

 

The western trough as it deepens will also broaden, becoming more of a long wave, rather than shortwave trough and so the ridge in the east will get kicked out. Right now, I recon we should see the cold return from the west sometime around the 16, 17th.

A wild setup will evolve across the country as we see a large temperature spread from west to east which should peak next weekend. Expect to see a major fight which shall produce snow and ice storms as areas of low pressure run a boundary between TX and the Great Lakes. With time this boundary will slide east and so the storminess will return to the East after a 5-7 day period of warmth.

More to come later!
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