It’s been and continues to be an active Pacific-North America pattern and the atmospheric dynamics are changing with the season.

Of course eastern Montana, Wyoming, North and South Dakota just got hit by a record Christmas Day blizzard, their 2nd blizzard in 2 weeks!

Bismarck is seen it’s snowiest season to date thanks to the back to back snowstorms.

Thanks to the two record breaking snowstorms in the space of 10 days, snow depth over central North Dakota is impressive for late December!

Deep snow is definitely playing a role in refrigerating the North Dakota night air.

So too is the December departure from normal.

The same system which brought the blizzard and record snow to parts of the Rockies and Northern Plains, brought a record mild Christmas to parts of the South and East.

As we head towards the end of December and 2016, the fun doesn’t stop because the New Years weekend ahead promises a storm if not a Nor’easter/New England blizzard followed by a 2nd major arctic outbreak.

Here’s the general thinking from weather.com.

Here’s the current model variation on the Northeast storm scenario.

Could be a real doosy for New England and a huge boost to the ski industry of the Northeast too.

After the bitter cold of the Mid-December, arctic/Siberia air has been reloading and with cross model agreement on an Alaska to Greenland ridge bridge, we look likely to see another discharge of brutal cold into the Lower 48 during the opening week of January.

In today’s video I show the GFS ensemble, below is the EPS Control snap shots and it shows the same idea but ECMWF tends to have a westward bias with the trough…

Watch today’s video.

FEATURED IMAGE CREDIT: YellowstoneNPS ‏@YellowstoneNPS