Wednesday Morning: The Anatomy of an Arctic Outbreak

Good morning everyone.In Mondays Post I discussed the factors behind a big cold pattern that will develop for most of November in the central and eastern United States. I also mentioned we need to be on the lookout for storm development over the next few weeks. We do have a storm threat early next week, but I am not ready to jump on anything major yet. I will save potential storm analysis for another post this week.

Today I want to focus on the evolution of a Arctic outbreak. All signs point to one middle of next week so lets take a look.

Way up in the poles we have something called a vortex. It is basically a big low pressure system at 18,000 ft in the atmosphere. This is where the coldest air in the northern hemisphere is held. A lot of media hype last year on this vortex, but just think of it as a pool of cold air. When the pattern becomes amplified like I described in Mondays post, it puts stress on this vortex and causes pieces to break off and move south. The result is big cold out breaks. The image below shows the vortex as of today..

As we move along in the period a wave breaking event will cause this vortex to move and slightly break up a little. As this happens a piece moves south as seen by the yellow circle..

By the time we get to middle of next week it is sitting right over southern Canada below..

What does this do? Well as I point out its brings a major early season cold shot. Here are the temperatures nationwide on Friday Morning.. 

Pretty impressive for early November! For the most part, next week will feel like January at times. 

More to come. Stay tuned.