Highlights:
- Mostly sunny and pleasant into mid week
- Gusty SW winds usher in near-record warmth to close the work week
- Friday night showers and storms
- Coldest air and first flakes of the season ahead
Brace For Changes…The short-term remains very quiet and pleasant. If you haven’t already, we suggest knocking out that remaining yard work for the season, or get a jump on the outdoor Christmas lights! (Rude changes loom).
Winds will turn gusty out of the southwest Thursday, especially by afternoon. These strong and gusty SW winds will top 40 MPH Thursday into Friday, but also serve to help give temperatures a boost. Highs both Thursday and Friday will be near record levels.
We should remain dry through the daytime Friday, but a band of showers and embedded thunder will rumble through the state Friday night as a strong cold front passes through. Behind the cold front, expect an abrupt wind shift to the northwest and falling temperatures through the day Saturday. Heavier jackets and coats will be required as wind chills in the 20s fall into the teens Saturday night into Sunday morning. Left-over, “backlash” moisture will fall in the form of flurries and scattered light snow showers. Further north, light accumulations of snow are possible across northern IN snowbelt communities.
Cold, dry weather will continue into early next week. Looking further ahead, another storm system looms around Thanksgiving.
Upcoming 7-Day Precipitation Forecast:
- Snowfall: 0.00″
- Rainfall: 0.25″-0.50″
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…