Saturday, January 31, 2009

Weather Pattern Never Seen Before!!! Ever......

There is warming in the Stratosphere in the past couple weeks to an extent not seen before in Jan. This usually takes places closer to March when spring is arriving. I included this picture of the atmospheric layers so you could see. The layer that our weather takes place in is the Troposphere. The warming in the Stratosphere will cause it to expand which will compress the Troposhpere causing it to cool. This would mean big continental arctic outbreaks, especially earlier in the winter like now. The other thing that makes this amazing is that it is happening during La-Nina. This is also very rare. According to Ed Berry he believes that this scenario will cause the blocking that has been happening over Greenland to shift to Canada and then to Alaska during the next few weeks. In that position it would take the strong Polar Jet from La Nina and force it South for a few weeks of storms pounding CA instead of the Pac NW & Canada. Models should begin to catch onto this and show more of a straight line of the storm train into CA over the next few weeks. One sign of this is that the models do show the NAO going towards positive the next few weeks which is a sign that the block/Arctic High will be shifting Westward away from Greenland. This pattern would mean big snows for the whole country in Feb. as the Southward shifted jetstream brings storms across the whole country & allows them to grab some moisture from the Gulf.

As far as the storm for this Friday, models back and forth a little on timing. Some have the cut-off stalling and waiting to be pushed in by a cold front which would start snow levels close to lake level and then drop them with 1-2 feet for everyone. Other models slow the cold front or even cause a second cut-off from it that follows the first cut-off. This would be a little less snow with snow levels starting above 7000 ft. and not falling quite as fast. Will have to keep watching because as the storm gets closer details will become more clear. Either way it should be a start to a major weather pattern change.

I won't go into anything farther than a week for now, especially with what is going on in the atmosphere globally. The models have never seen this before so how can they accurately predict very far out. Something that should be watched though. The ingredients to a big Feb./beginning of March are on the table. Let's hope they continue to come together just right. BA

5 comments:

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BA said...

Yea, I hope to have snow over our heads soon!

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