Monday Morning Weather Discussion: Breaking Down The Long Range

Good morning everyone and welcome to February! From the beginning I expected February to be our most active month this winter in terms of temperatures and snowfall. In today's post I want to revisit my case study focusing on the week following the Superbowl. At the very least, we will all see much colder air enter the area by this time frame. In addition, the overall pattern will support storms and rumors of storms for the eastern 1/3. This was the original image I posted a week ago when we started to focus on this period..

Before we get there, this week will be warmer than normal with temperatures surging into the 50's for many areas. By the time we get to Wednesday a storm will cut to our west bringing in rain to the area..

In the wake of this storm cooler air settles in for the weekend. This is where things will start to get very interesting. We have two periods to watch, Sunday night into Monday and Wednesday of that week.  

I am a little pressed for time this morning and will cover all of this in more detail tonight. Here is a general summary of what I am watching:

• Split flow in the jet stream enhances the potential for big storms to develop next week.
• The first shot is Monday
• Hard to nail this down right now as a lot will depend on how a frontal wave on Friday sets up ahead of this threat
• low confidence at this time
• The 2nd and more probable shot is a big storm to develop middle of next week
• This storm should effect someone in the eastern 1/3
• An inland running (warmer) scenario is a possibility.

So much of how these systems develop depends on what happens ahead of them. What I mean by this is we have so much on the maps right now to track. For example, this rainstorm Wednesday will set up the weekend which will then set up middle of next week. It is almost impossible to say what will happen next week without ironing out the initial storm systems first. What we need to do is monitor trends and understand that the overall pattern is very juiced up right now. Models will always have a hard time when we have a split flow in the jet stream like you see below..

I will have a post up tonight around 7 discussing all of this in more detail.