The major snow, ice and rain producer of the past few days is clearing the playing field, weakening as it pushes through the Southeast. In comes the next feature but this, while could bring a foot of snow to parts of the Plains, Upper Midwest, won’t have the same level of cold to work with. More Pacific cold rather than arctic.

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The GFS surface shows the next system and how it’s got enough cold to bring a sizable snow event from Kansas to Minnesota but notice the higher thicknesses. An indication of less cold air. As a result, rainfall in the warm sector won’t be as significant, ice shouldn’t be much of a problem either and temps out ahead, won’t be quite as warm.

Nonetheless, this will still be a decent snow event.

As the system lifts out through the Great Lakes, heights build in it’s wake and with deep negatives over both Alaska extending south and Greenland extending south, you tend to have stronger heights over most of the Lower 48, this is the classic December pattern during a strong El Nino with the coldest air bottled within the arctic.

 

5-day mean 500mb height anomalies.

Day 1-5

6-10

11-15

See this morning’s video for the discussion.

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