It’s an impressively cold, even snowy end to October from the Midwest into the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic with record measurable snow in Chicago yesterday. Many sites across Iowa recorded anywhere from a trace to a few inches of snow and even parts of the Ohio Valley are receiving snow up to a month ahead of schedule.

Here was the scene this morning out of Springfield, Ohio.

The clipper-like system is now crossing the Appalachians with snow and a mix breaking out across the higher elevations of Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia and even North Carolina. After as much as 2-4 inches falls in some favoured mountain locales, the system will exit the East Coast and this opens the door for the coldest air of the season to sweep in. The bitterly cold, unstable air crossing the Great Lakes and with still warm waters, means lake effect snow bands will break out. Favoured areas downwind could get up to between 6-12 inches of snow.

Here’s the GFS surface/precipitation chart for Friday and note the lake induced precipitation caused by cold NW winds blowing across the warm water.

Here’s the 5,000ft temps for the same time Friday!

Latest GFS snow chart for 48 hrs.

A cold high settles into the East overnight Friday into Saturday and thus Saturday looks to be the coldest morning with clear skies and light winds.

Here’s the surface chart.

Here’s the GFS projected 09Z 2 metre temps Saturday morning.

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Here’s a closer look at the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. Note the widespread area of 30F with an area of <25F covering westernmost Virginia, eastern West Virginia into North Carolina. A few spots could creep into the teens.

Here’s the Southeast.

Note the 32F line enters northeast Alabama. A few spots may dip into the 20s here.

Big Snowstorm Followed By Stronger Arctic Blast?

Models continue to show a second blast of arctic cold next week down the Plains and a major storm system developing at the base of the trough which could support a big Rockies snowstorm starting this weekend.

The GFS isn’t as deep with the trough nor with the storm system which the ECMWF develops into a fairly major system bringing a fair amount of snow and coverage across the Rockies into the Plains.

Here’s the ECMWF snow chart through 168 hrs.

Check out the trough and the cold which dives south on the rear of the system.

156 hr 850mb temps.

174 hr

Check out the snow chart!

Warming Trend In November?

The NAO is heading towards back towards positive while the PNA is trying to go back neutral. This supports the idea of a more zonal pattern across North America after next week’s cold blast and storm.

As for the AO is heading for the strongest positive potentially of the entire year. That will help really build arctic air over the source region.

Here’s the indexes according to the GFS ensembles.

The latest CFSv2 weeklies show the cold diving into the Plains and covering most of the country next week but then a warm-up follows. November could see somewhat of a western trough, slight eastern ridge week 2-3 of November.

6-10 day

Week 3-4

The 500mb chart shows the zonal west-east flow week 2 then much more of a +NAO signal week 3-4 which should herald warmer, wetter times for the Eastern US.

6-10

Week 3-4

Here’s the CFSv2 for November!

I agree with this and the turnaround into December with the first REAL taste of winter..

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Tags: US October cold, US October coldwave