Good morning. Despite the fact we have seen remarkably mild weather over the last several weeks, I see evidence mounting for a big pattern flip by late Jan into February. This is based on a large influencer of the weather pattern- thunderstorm location in the tropical pacific moving into a very favorable location over next several weeks. In addition to this, the polar vortex looks like it will weaken and elongate from its record strength.
Translation...winter returns last week of January into Feb for the Northeast. Cant say when and if it snows but chances should significantly go up.
Starting off, here is the projected structure of the polar vortex by end of this week...
Compared to its strong circular shape in late Dec (warm signal)...
In a general sense when you stretch the vortex aligned with the east, it eventually causes a cold response in the atmosphere below within 2 weeks. That brings us to end of January.
In addition, here is current location of thunderstorms in tropics and their expected movement (a major pattern driver)...
Green is T Storms, yellow is stable air. You want to see T Storms not in region I drew the X. My red boxes show where they are expected to go next few weeks. This is a great location. If we look where T. Storms in these locations have caused for the Jet Stream pattern over North America in the past we get this...
Blue is cold.
What is interesting is even though models in late December showed cold for January (big fail). These thunderstorms where not in a favorable spot.
This time, we are currently observing the T. Storm in a great spot plus the Polar Vortex weakening.
So when the long range models now show this for late Jan I we can verify current observations support it...
Give it time. It will stay mild next two weeks but I see great support for winter to return.