Wednesday Pattern Update: Not Giving Up

Good morning and Happy New Year! I know by now everyone must be giving up on winter. After all, why not. It has been a mild and snowless December with frequent rain. As the calendar strikes January 1st there seems to be no break in this pattern. Naturally, the normal conclusion would be winter is over. 

However, I cannot make that conclusion at this time. No, its not because I just love the cold and snow and am biased, but its because the data I am looking at will not let me. Sure, when it is all said and one I can be wrong and this mild pattern holds for most of the season but I really do not think that will happen based on a few main things going on.

At this time,  think we have 10-15 more days left of this mild pattern then things flip by mid-January to cold and stormy. If by then nothing does change then yes you will see me throw in the towel. But until then I am going down with the ship on this if it does not occur.

The main factors I am looking at are:

• A major stratospheric warming and polar vortex split that has just occurred
• Thunderstorms in the tropics projected to move into a more favorable place for colder air on the east coast
• My seasonal analogs

Staring off, we just have begun to see a split of the polar vortex way up in the atmosphere. To keep things simple, the polar vortex is a semi permanent area of low pressure that sits over the north pole in the winter time. When it is strong the cold air tends to stay locked to the north. When it weakens due to warm air breaking it up, it tends to result in that cold air funneling south to the lower latitudes. This process does not happen over night and usually happens 2.5-3 weeks after a warming and or split occurs.

At this time a split just occurred. Notice how the vortex has split into 3 regions...

Remember this is way up in the atmosphere so it will take time to work its way down to the lower levels and have an impact on our weather. However, the implication of this can be major. Based on where the vortex as split it favors seeing very cold air develop over the regions I circled and high pressure over the region in red which is the north pole. When you get high pressure over the north pole it causes cold air to drill south. Something not to ignore for sure

Secondly, we have our thunderstorm pattern in the pacific (MJO pattern) projected to move into a more favorable region. This is very tough to predict by models, but based on where they are placing these thunderstorms it should produce a pattern like this based on historical cases...

Thirdly, we have my January forecast per my winter forecast analogs...

So there is my logic but what do the long range models say?

In the short term our mild pattern continues with pacific air moving in due to low pressure off the west coast south of Alaska...

Based on the three factors I laid out above, this circled region should flip to high pressure which will block off pacific air in 10 to 15 days.

The GFS model starts to show that...

The Canadian model is similar but the European is not showing this...

So there is the chance I am wrong here. But again I can not just look at one model and ignore those other factors.

We now are going to have to wait to see how this plays out. Like I said, if by mid-Jan nothing is happening I will be the first to throw in the towel. Right now, at least I laid out my case why I still refuse to do so.

More to come.