BLOG: Will We Be Shoveling Soon?

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Before the weekend hits, wanted to do a quick post on the potential for snow early next week. First of all, the rest of Friday will bring scattered flurries and snow showers and we will have to watch for some small accumulations in the stronger bands. There can still be another inch or two in the western and northern part of the WFMJ viewing area.The weekend will be cold and largely uneventful. A touch of snow can occur Saturday night and early Sunday with perhaps a coating in spots.Very late Sunday night and early Monday, 2 features will be converging on the Valley. 1) The powerful arctic cold front that will bring in VERY cold air (for November) 2) A quick-moving area of low pressure to our south and east: slpmonThat low will spread snow across the Appalachians and back into parts of the Ohio Valley. The question is: how FAR west does the snow get. It depends on the exact track of the system. As is often the case a few days out, there are some differences in the various computer models we look at.The challenges can be visualized by looking at the SREF (Short Range Ensemble Forecast) Model: There is a big "spread" amongst the 21 members of the ensemble: sref What do I think? Well with the information available, I suspect this is a 1-3" type of event, which isn't a BIG storm but could be enough to cause some travel issues Monday.On the subject of COLD...Tuesday is going to be brutal. Temperatures will be no higher than the mid 20s and check out the potential wind chills Tuesday morning: gfs_windchill_ohio_35These numbers are likely TOO cold but even if they are off by 10-15 degrees, it will still feel like the teens! The air will be coming straight from the arctic circle. Here's the jet stream Tuesday: jettues But we WILL break out of this pattern toward the end of next week. Check out the change in the jet stream by Thursday: jetthurs 

BLOG: Here Comes Winter!

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As you know if you have seen my Winter Forecast , we are expecting another colder-than-average Winter across our part of the country. It would be nice to have an unusually mild November before we settle into another long Winter, right??? Well, if only wishing made it so.Next week will bring some January-like cold into the United States. I GUARANTEE you will hear all sorts of talk about the "Polar Vortex" again....it was last year's buzzword after all. As a quick reminder, the Polar Vortex is NOT something unusual...in fact it exists almost year-round. Occasionally, every single Winter, it roams away from it's usual home around the North Pole and has a part in changing weather regimes around the Northern Hemisphere. Today, it's in it's "usual" spot (highlighted in black): vorrtexA sequence of events will take place in the coming days that will dislodge the vortex and send it south. Would you believe that a key player in our cold next week is a Typhoon that is SE of Japan right now??? Typhoon Nuri is "recurving"  in the western Pacific right now and is shown ("L" on left) on this analysis of the sea level pressure in that part of the world: slpnowThe system will rocket northeast and EXPLODE into a very intense low pressure system in the Bering Sea by this weekend: slpsaturdayLook at all those isobars! This storm will cause enormous waves and a tremendous amount of wind. But I promised to show you what this system has to do with our upcoming cold snap. This system, as most "recurving" typhoons do, will cause an atmospheric chain reaction in the Pacific and over North America. It's important to remember that air is a (invisible) fluid. It behaves very much like water. The intense system west of Alaska is like a big rock that is dropped in a pond. Downstream of that rock, a big wave forms. In the atmosphere, we refer the top of the wave as a ridge. That ridge can be seen pumping up in western Alaska on Saturday: jetsaturdayNote there is already a pre-existing ridge on the West Coast of the US and over NW Canada.By the middle of next week, the jet stream will look like this: jettuesA massive ridge of high pressure on the West Coast, extending all the way up to the Arctic Circle....and our "friend" the Polar Vortex has dipped all the way to far southern Canada. So, to review, the recurving Typhoon pumped the ridge, which in turned deepened the trough over North America.The air that will enter the US will come straight from the North Pole. Here's a look at the temperatures and steering currents a week from now: 500andtempswedsTemperature color table is on the left.Ok, so that's a lot of "big picture" stuff. What's about the weather here in Ohio/PA??This pattern will likely produce a few days late next week where highs stay in the 30s. Latest GFS Ensemble model temperatures for next 16 days: gefsYikes.Depending on how long this pattern persists, we might have a shot to crack the top 10 coldest Novembers on record in Youngstown. Here's the list, based on average temperature (combining highs and lows):coldnovembers 1976 tops the list and that's interesting because the Winter of 1976-1977 (the coldest on record in Youngstown) is one of our "analogs"...ie years in which the oceans and atmosphere have conditions most similar to this one. See the Winter Forecast video for more on "analogs".What about snow??? I don't think accumulating snow  will accompany this shot of cold in the WFMJ viewing area, although flurries will surely be seen. Lake-effect snow WILL be an issue along I-90 in NE Ohio and into NW PA and western NY. Enough to shovel: eurosnowThanks for reading!Eric