As we progress towards true spring and warmer weather, precipitation become more important as evaporation rates increase. There has been a decent start to 2013 up and down the Mississippi and Ohio River Valley in terms and even for areas such as Chicago where fall and early winter was exceptionally dry with warmer than normal temperatures, the second half of winter fared much better.From Texas to the Carolinas, the February through first part of March period has been very good with plenty of precipitation. Upwards of 10-20 inches of rain has fallen across a broad part of the region and has significantly helped the long term drought situation here. Florida on the other hand has seen quite the dry spell and this doesn’t bode well for later down the road.There has been decent precipitation throughout winter across many parts of the Pacific Northwest, Rockies etc but the Southwest has been very dry with a large swath of California well below normal. This is not good as we progress towards the warm season as water shortages will quickly become an issue.[s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)]

Los Angeles stands at less than 20% normal rainfall with surrounding communities far less. Unfortunately there appears to be no end in sight and this could very well mean a long, hot and very dry summer ahead for the Southwest.

According to the QPF, there is a decent swath of precipitation extending from the Pacific Northwest to Florida with a couple of systems set to bring 2-4, locally 6 inches of rain to Washington state over the next 7 days. Another corridor of heavy precipitation extends from the Florida Panhandle to New England.

Thankfully Texas has seen a fairly wet winter with the drought far less severe than 6-12 months ago. The recent snowstorms along with a fairly wet fall will bode well for the upcoming spring and summer I believe.

Unfortunately, there is NO true precipitation on the horizon for California with the exception of the Redwood forest in the NW corner.

It will be interesting to see with the current negative NAO whether the ECMWF is correct with a late week storm on the East Coast. The GFS shows nothing whereas the ECMWF suggests a significant snowstorm. What both models are in agreement of is the cold trough which dives into the East but lets see if there is some sort of coastal system which can throw moisture into the cold air.

Here’s the latest ECMWF showing the cold 850mb temps in the Midwest Thursday.

East in Friday.

More later!

[/s2If][s2If current_user_is(s2member_level0)]

Join a subscription plan, [s2Get constant=”S2MEMBER_CURRENT_USER_DISPLAY_NAME” /]!

[warning]You do not have a valid subscription to access premium content exclusive to members. You will need to join a subscription plan if you would like to continue.[/warning][/s2If][s2If !is_user_logged_in()]

Sign in to read the full forecast…

Not yet a member? Start your 7 day free trial

Create your free markvoganweather.com account today to get unlimited access to Mark Vogan’s premium articles, video forecasts and expert analysis for 7 days.
[/s2If]