1.) A cold close to the work week can be expected with highs today only topping out in the upper 20s (average highs are in the upper 30s).
2.) What at one time looked to be a significant weekend storm now may not even deliver any precipitation at all to the region. A flurry is possible, but most should remain precipitation-free this weekend. Expect a gusty southwest wind developing SB Sunday. Highs around freezing Saturday will zoom into the middle 40s Sunday. Lows Saturday morning in the middle 10s will rise into the upper 20s to around 30 Sunday morning.
3.) A more significant storm system will cut for the Great Lakes early next week and this will deliver gusty showers and embedded thunderstorms. A couple of stronger storms aren’t out of the question. Locally heavy rains can be expected, including amounts of 1″-1.5″ (locally heavier totals).
4.) Cold air will rush back into the region behind the storm and snow showers and squalls are likely by Wednesday.
5.) Longer-term, a real fight is developing on the overall direction we’re heading as February evolves. Analog methods and teleconnections (shown below) would yield bullish cold signals and give hope to winter enthusiasts. However, modeling isn’t in agreement on the wintry ideas. In fact, some modeling is very spring-like as mid-Feb nears. Stay tuned as we try and iron out the details this weekend. Updates will come.
Showers will expand in overall coverage as we progress through the late morning hours, but shouldn’t amount to much (0.10″ for a few neighborhoods). We return to a drier theme this afternoon.
Longer term, the GFS ensemble continues to show the cold growing deeper and stronger for the region as we progress into early February. Winter is far from over.
After the past week to ten days, that frigid open to the month seems like forever ago! The past 7-10 days has featured a significant January thaw, and temperatures now, MTD, are warmer than average across the Ohio Valley. Warmest anomalies can be found across the southeast region.
That said, the pattern is shifting back to winter for the last week of the month and while the duration, longer-term, can be argued, the next 2-3 weeks appear to offer an opportunity to play “catch up” in both the snow and cold departments. Note the developing eastern troughiness. This will bring colder air back into the east as we close January and open February. The GFS ensembles, courtesy of Tropicaltidbits.com, also develops an interesting “blocky” look towards the end of the period in Week 2. Should this verify, it would lead to a better chance of the cold, active pattern locking in.
Thinking here at IndyWx.com believes the European is likely rushing the warmer central look. Time will tell…
This will take us through mid week and into the weekend with lows in the single digits and lower teens and highs generally in the lower and middle 20s. We still need to watch Thursday evening-night for a wave of low pressure that may attempt to deliver light snow, but this doesn’t look like a significant event from this distance.
To further complicate matters, the European and Canadian solutions are much less robust and result in a more suppressed scenario. Forecasters (including yours truly) can only wish for the days to return of worrying about respected snow/ mix/ rain lines amongst the various data, versus the present time of models showing a storm only to take it away from run-to-run and other modeling not even showing the storm.
That brings us to our next point and that’s the modeling performance, itself. For really the better part of a year now, modeling has been poor, at best- even in the short-term solutions. More recently speaking to the last few months, I can’t recall model data ever performing worse (13 years of forecasting experience).