Highlights:
- Breezy and warm close to the work week
- T-storms Friday evening
- Cold weekend with Saturday flurries
Changeable Weather…If you don’t find a way to get outside today something is wrong. Let the boss know IndyWx.com gave you permission to spend an extended lunch outdoors today. 🙂 Sunny skies and unseasonably warm temperatures will be with us through the day, along with an increasingly gusty afternoon wind.
Clouds increase Friday and showers develop Friday evening. A couple of stronger thunderstorms are also possible as the front sweeps through the state. While we’re not forecasting a widespread severe wind potential, one or two strong and gusty storms are possible. The front will hit like a wall Friday night and feature an abrupt wind shift and plummeting temperatures. That high Saturday in the lower 40s will be predawn as most of the day will be spent in the 30s with gusty winds and snow flurries. Steadier snow squalls will be found across north and northeast IN.
Dry, chilly weather will be with us for the remainder of the weekend, continuing into the beginning of the Thanksgiving week ahead. Our next storm system is slated for the big travel day Wednesday. Expect showers and gusty winds followed by colder weather for Thanksgiving, itself.
Upcoming 7-Day Precipitation Forecast:
- Snowfall: Trace
- Rainfall: 0.50″ – 0.75″
Speaking of warmth, 2016 has been a very warm year.
(The cold of 2014 seems so long ago…)
Back to present. We’ve targeted the middle part of November to finally beginning “bucking” the recent warm trend. This won’t happen overnight and will be a battle of back and forth, initially. Thus, the “step-down” label. To be clear, November, as a whole, will finish much warmer than average. It’s virtually impossible to counter the incredibly warm start. That said, we do anticipate “jabs” of colder air working in here over the next couple weeks. For instance, this weekend will feature lows in the 20s for most and highs not making it out of the 40s Saturday afternoon. (The average low and high at IND Saturday are 37 and 54).
When we look at the AAM forecast (above), we note the westerlies may begin to slow (indicative of the negative values) in the 8-10 day period. This is crucial and, simply put, has to happen for the pattern to begin shifting into more of a position to allow sustained cold to enter the equation. We want to reiterate that this, in and of itself, doesn’t create the cold, but instead allows the pattern to begin shifting away from the Nino-like (warm) regime into more of a La Nina pattern, as a whole. – Hey, you have to start somewhere.
Additionally, the EPO is forecast negative off the GEFS and EPS. (Images courtesy of Weatherbell.com).
Again, this is a cold signal. (Image courtesy of Madusweather.com).
The ensemble data is also beginning to key-in on higher heights (blocking) developing over the top. Notice the significant changes in the overall look to the pattern between now and days 11-16. (Images courtesy of Weatherbell.com).
In summary, and in the face of *most* seasonal data that is screaming warm, warm, warm, we still don’t have any significant changes to our overall thinking of “step-down” mid-November giving way to more sustained wintry-like conditions in the overall sense from the Thanksgiving-Christmas period. Time will tell and only the Good Lord knows what the future holds, but we’ve done far too much work and research to throw the “game plan” in the trash before the game even begins…
