The coldest air of the season is greeting us out the door this morning, complete with snow flurries and wind chill values around zero. Safe to say that the heavy winter gear is needed today as highs struggle to crack 30° later on.
We’re waking up to 10s this morning with wind chill values near 0°.Snow flurries and scattered light snow showers compliment the arctic intrusion this morning. No accumulation of significance is expected.
The upper pattern will transition to a milder (no blow torch by any means) and more active regime as we navigate the next 6-10 days. Most, if not all, storm systems will feature “wet vs. white” weather here over this particular time period.
Dry times return Wednesday only to give way to increasing clouds and widespread rain Thursday PM into Friday. The overall gloomy and damp pattern will prevail over the weekend and into early next week. Needless to say, enjoy whatever sunshine you can get later today and Wednesday.
Wetter than normal times return late week into early Week 2.
It continues to look like the potential is there for more appreciable cold to get back involved with the pattern after mid-month and especially closer to the holidays.
We’re waking up to cold (lows bottomed out in the middle 20s for most central Indiana neighborhoods) but dry conditions. While we’ll deal with more clouds today, dry conditions will hold today and tonight.
A weak system will move through the Ohio Valley Sunday with a wintry mix of wet snow and a cold rain across central Indiana, mostly rain downstate, and all snow across north-central and northern Indiana. Sunday will dawn dry but light precipitation will overspread the state from west to east through the mid morning hours. We don’t envision any sort of snow accumulation with the exception of far western central Indiana (dusting) northeast into the northern 1/3 of the state (1”-2” amounts on grassy and elevated surfaces). Generally speaking we think the accumulation potential is greatest from Rockville to Kokomo, and up to Fort Wayne. Light precipitation will end as a brief period of light snow Sunday night into Indianapolis but “light” is the key word and we don’t expect any accumulation concerns in the city, itself.
The coldest air so far this season blows into town as we open the work week. In fact, highs may struggle to reach freezing Tuesday, including morning lows into the 10s.
November will close out on a colder than normal note.
After Sunday, from a precipitation perspective, we’re talking about a very dry and quiet regime until we get to Friday. We’ll close the work week with a new storm system that will deliver a rainy Friday.
By this point, a transition to milder times will be underway so we don’t expect any sort of p-type challenges with this particular system.
We’ve been keying in for several days on the energy that will lead to a Thanksgiving and Black Friday Winter Storm for the Rockies, and eventually a swath of accumulating snow into the Plains over the holiday weekend. To no surprise, modeling continues to trend more organized with this energy as it moves across the Plains and into the Ohio Valley this weekend. The time we’re monitoring for potential wintry impacts across central Indiana come early Sunday morning, continuing into the afternoon.
As bullish as we’ve been on this trending towards a more substantial system, capable of producing snow, locally, we remain confident that this won’t be some sort of significant winter storm. Why? Pattern recognition on both fronts. That said, the potential of a light snow accumulation across central Indiana Sunday is very much alive and kicking as of this evening. Know that we’ll be here right through the holiday and the weekend tracking the latest and will continue to keep you posted moving forward.
Regardless if we receive snow or not, the coldest air so far this season is on deck early next week.
Models continue to trend more organized with our holiday weekend system, potentially capable of the 1st widespread snow of the season for central Indiana.
I. The weather pattern will turn progressively colder as we move through the Thanksgiving holiday. This isn’t anything earth-shattering by any stretch, but temperatures running 4° to 8° below normal is pretty stout. There’s also still the potential of an early season arctic “jab” prior to us getting out of the first 3-5 days of December, but that likely comes after this weekend- if at all.
As a whole, it’s a dry pattern that will accompany the chill, but we will want to continue keeping an eye on energy that will eject off the Rockies over the weekend. At times models can underplay these features only to have to correct stronger as we grow closer to the potential event. Will that be the case this time? Impossible to say from this distance- just something we’ll continue to monitor with such a busy travel period. As it is today, modeling wants to “string” the energy out which would essentially be a light or non-event.
II. While the pattern drivers all are aligned for a cold open (first few days) of December, there’s reason to believe a period of milder than normal air will take foot just after- say sometime between 12/5 and 12/8, or so. That said, we’re in a bit of a fork in the road so to speak.
The East Pacific Oscillation (EPO) is going to pop positive at least for a period of time prior to mid-December. This strongly argues for a relaxation of the cold regime that we’ll endure to open the month. Guidance differs on the handling of the MJO, however. Should the American guidance be correct in taking things into Phase 4, when combined with what we see transpiring with the EPO, then we’re off to the races for at least a 7-10 day period of much warmer than normal temperatures. That said, European guidance collapses the MJO into the “null” phase and even hints at things emerging again in the colder phases come mid December. While we still have time to sort through this “mess,” the idea here is that the cold open to the month will moderate to slightly to moderately above normal for a 7-10 day period leading us into mid-month. Thereafter, I’m becoming increasingly bullish for a renewed cold pattern developing towards the Christmas and New Years holidays…
It’ll be important to closely monitor the MJO as we head into early-mid December as this will have big impacts on our overall weather pattern.
I. November has opened on a chilly note. Through the 1st few days of the month, Indianapolis is running a whopping 6° below average. Warming will take place in the days ahead and we’re not finished with the 70s just yet. Wednesday stands the best shot at 70° warmth but it’s an admittedly tricky forecast with a wavy front hanging nearby.
After a cold start, November will take a milder turn.
II. A cold front and associated area of low pressure will offer up the best chance of widespread rain midweek, but we’re still not talking about any sort of heavy rain amounts. The bigger deal will be the cooler air moving in behind this system for late week and next weekend.
III. The type of air mass behind the boundary, though cooler, won’t have the same arctic nature to it that our last cold spell included. We’re talking a few days of highs in the 45° to 50° range and overnight lows in the lower 30s. An upper level ridge should return for mid month along with an unseasonably mild pattern. After midweek, the pattern as a whole is also a dry one into mid month.
