Before we dig into the late-February pattern, there’s no let-up in sight with respect to our current active weather pattern. Just next week alone, we’re tracking (3) systems:
I. Sunday
II. Wednesday
III. Thursday-Friday
This is all part of the big battle taking place between a persistent southeast ridge and western trough. The tight thermal gradient between these features will help “fuel” continued active times, and above average precipitation next week. As mentioned this morning, at times we’ll have to deal with bouts of moderate-heavy rain, and at others, sleet, snow, and freezing rain.
Looking ahead, we continue to build our longer range forecast by using “base ingredients” that feature a 50-50 split of the MJO (Madden Julian Oscillation) and EPO (East Pacific Oscillation).
The MJO maintains a warm look, rolling things into Phase 5-6 over the next few weeks.
As you know by now, these are warm phases- especially across the eastern portion of the country.
The “saving grace” for fans of at least being on the playing field for a chance of wintry weather in such warm MJO phases is the negative EPO. There’s great model agreement that this negative EPO will continue into the middle part of the month and this will keep us on our toes for wintry implications as storms track through the region. Conversely, there’s reason to buy into a “blow torch” regime to close the month, as the EPO flips positive and combines with the Phase 5-6 of the MJO.
To no surprise, given the above, we see the new European Weeklies showing a warming trend (after the fight over the upcoming week) for late-February.
The JMA Weeklies from this morning (for the Weeks 3-4 time frame) would agree.
