Winter Weather Update

I often wonder if forecasting is doomed to failure due to the fact of opposition of the forces of nature itself.  We depend on our own small minds against the vast currents of the atmosphere and the guesses of the machinery we have created with our own mathematical formulas.  Our weather can start in the western or eastern Pacific and is dependent on the formation of low or high pressure centers in the troposphere.  With the formations of these systems we try to guess which way they may move along with any other systems in the northern hemisphere.  Our guesses have a closer chance of becoming reality 3 to 5 days out, beyond that we try to mix in the condition of the elements of the Arctic and Atlantic oscillations and how they may push the systems in to the U.S..  Of course this is all simply put and many other factors can come into play such as lift, wind speed and in our area the great lakes.

I follow Dr. Judah Cohen at AER who puts out daily Twitter posts and a weekly blog post on atmospheric conditions of the northern hemisphere.  He uses a lot of analogs of previous years which point to similar conditions as we are seeing this year and how those analogs can point to a major polar displacement into the U.S. this coming winter.  He has been talking about a polar disruption coming towards the end of the month for the eastern U.S. for the past couple weeks, though it is still unknown if it will last through the rest of the winter or will be a passing event.

I have been thinking along the same lines with Alaska and the S.E. U.S. being below normal temperature wise over the next couple weeks – the rest of the U.S. will remain several degrees above normal.  All the cold air is pushed into Alaska, central Europe and Siberia.  It is still my belief the cold air will be forced southeastward into the U.S. at the end of the month bringing back the cold and snow but this may be short lived as we move into January.  This doesn’t mean we can’t have snow with above normal temperatures predicted.  If we can get a descent snow pack and the upper atmosphere is cold we can see snow.  Current normals are generally in the mid 30s for this time of year for Michigan – we have been in the upper 30s to near 40° this week and should continue this pattern over the next couple weeks.

The question remains, will we have a white Christmas?  At this point I would say it will be a close call but most of the models are showing the snow will hold off until after Christmas.  The first graphic is the GEM model through the 23rd.  The second is the GFS going through the 29th with the snow still unremarkable with only a few inches at best at the end of the month.

 

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The next graphic is the GEFS guess which brings the snow on Christmas Eve and accumulates to several inches through the 29th.  The final image is the 850mb temperature map showing cold air moving in around Christmas though unremarkable we may squeeze some snow out of it.  The real cold air may hold off until mid January with daytime temps in the teens, even that may be short lived.

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With all this said all these predictions are guesses as I said earlier in this post.  At this point I would guess we will continue the pattern we are in up to Christmas at least, with above normal temps in the upper 30s to low 40s with more rain (feature image) than snow.  So the blah, bland and boring pattern will continue.

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