As I write this, many Hoosiers are awaking to temperatures at downright bitter levels, despite the fact it’s only mid November. The official low here at IndyWx.com HQ was a frosty 18 degrees and a far cry from the normal low of 37.
The early season bitter air mass has even settled in across portions of the Deep South and Coastal Plain. Amazingly, snow was reported along the Carolina coastline last night (almost unheard of for mid November). Note the deep freeze penetrating far into the Deep South. My home town of Auburn, AL dipped to a frigid 27 degrees this morning. Again, very rare for so early in the season.
It’s my job to look at what is behind these expansive early season bitter attacks of air (by the way, another bitterly cold air mass is ahead next week). In my opinion, a lot of the early shots of impressive arctic air has to do with the widespread early snow and ice pack developing across the Northern Hemisphere. We wrote about this first back on October 17th and the snow and ice pack has only been growing since. The latest image shows a very impressive and vast snow and ice pack for so early in the season. As early season cold moves south into the Lower 48, it doesn’t have much time to modify as it passes over the growing early season snow pack.
As we look ahead, despite the weekend warm-up, another impressive shot of arctic air will plow into the Hoosier state early next week (perhaps even colder than this current air mass). The European forecast model, once again, shows temperatures 12-18 degrees below normal by early next week.
Temperatures currently are running well below normal in similar areas modeling is sticking the “heart” of the cold next week.
As we continue rumbling into the colder, snowier months ahead, one has to at least wonder what the overall impact of the early season expansive snow and ice cover during October and November will leave on the winter of 2013-2014…