Major Pacific Northwest winter storm poised to slam Eastern U.S. this weekend
A major winter storm powered ashore today in the Pacific Northwest, bringing heavy rain and snow to the Olympic Mountains. This storm dumped four inches of rain over the Olympics, bringing the Skokomish River to flood stage. Record warm temperatures ahead of the storm have surged northwards across the Pacific Northwest, with Seattle, Washington hitting a record high of 55°F yesterday. Snowfall amounts approaching 2 feet are expected in the Olympic Mountains from the storm, with 1 - 3 feet likely in the Cascade Mountains. This is typical sort of storm one expects to see during a La Niña winter.
Figure 1. Radar-estimated precipitation from the Seattle radar for the period Dec 7 - Dec 8. Precipitation amounts in excess of 4 inches have occurred over the Olympic Mountains. Mountains surrounding Seattle block the radar beam, leading to the streaky nature of the image.
As the storm tracks eastwards over the Central U.S. later this week, it will intensify and pull in a large amount of cold, Canadian air. The latest set of computer model runs have come into much better agreement on the track of the storm, and a band of heavy snow of 6 - 10 inches is likely to set up over Central Illinois on Saturday afternoon. The storm will move rapidly eastwards, with the heaviest snow likely to impact northern Indiana, northern Ohio, and southern Ontario on Sunday. The biggest cold blast of the season thus far will roar in behind the storm, causing widespread blowing and drifting of the snow, plus new heavy Lake-effect snows in the lee of the Great Lakes. Low temperatures approaching -20°F are likely in northern Minnesota Saturday and Sunday night after the storm passes. By Tuesday morning, much of the eastern half of the nation will shiver through one the coldest mornings on record for the first half of December, with below freezing temperatures expected to penetrate all the way into South Florida. Record lows were set across much of Southeast U.S. this morning, with 39°F at Fort Lauderdale, 16°F in Columbia SC, and 9°F in Lychburg, VA. Temperatures much colder than this are likely on Tuesday morning across the region.
Figure 2. Forecast surface temperature for 7am EST on Tuesday, December 14, as predicted by this morning's 1am EST run of the GFS model. The heavy red line running along the coast of Florida is the 0°C freezing line, and temperatures below freezing are expected across nearly all of the Southeast U.S.
I'll have a new post on Thursday, when I'll discuss the CSU and TSR forecasts for the 2011 hurricane season. The TSR forecast was released Monday, and the CSU forecast is due out later today.
Jeff Masters
An image from the Lake Effect Snow Chase that Matt and I went on.
CLICK HERE for the entire chase account detailed with videos and photos!
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ACROSS SOUTH FL. GFS/ECMWF CONTINUE TO BE CONSISTENT WITH THIS.
1000-850 MB THICKNESSES IN BOTH OF THESE MODELS CONTINUE TO RUN
LOWER THAN WERE SEEN WITH THIS CURRENT COLD WAVE. SO INDICATIONS
ARE THAT COLDER TEMPS MAY BE SEEN ACROSS THE AREA EARLY NEXT
WEEK...WITH THE COLDEST MORNINGS LIKELY BEING TUE/WED MORNINGS.
SHOULD MODELS CONTINUE TO INDICATE THIS POTENTIAL...THEN A FREEZE
OUTLOOK MAY BE ISSUED TOMORROW. HAVE TRENDED TEMPS DOWN FOR
TUESDAY...IN TERMS OF LOWS AND HIGHS...AS GFS MOS IS LIKELY
RUNNING TOO HIGH...AS PER HPC AND LOCAL KNOWLEDGE OF ITS BEHAVIOR
IN UPCOMING COLD EVENTS. STAY TUNED.
Miami: 0%
Daytona: 1%
Tampa: 2%
Jacksonville: 3%
Pensacola: 3%
Lake City: 4%
Orlando: 4%
Tallahassee: 9%
And these--
New Orleans, LA: 0%
Mobile, AL: 5%
Savannah, GA: 8%
Valdosta, GA: 12%
Macon, GA: 12%
Yikes...
I see another blast is coming this weekend. Could be a record breaking cold winter for us down here. I may have to find an ice scraper if this keeps up.
Caption: Come to sunny Florida and frolick on our snow-capped beaches and build you own snowman.
And don't forget the ice scraper.
The Oranges will be silently screaming,..
.."The Horror,the Horror"...
No not really, it gets a lot colder in Florida then you think, I had to scrape a layer of ice off my window this morning, and not too far north of here the low was 22, probably colder than where you live even though your farther north lol.
Believe it or not, but the ground in Florida is more efficient at removing heat than many places further north, so when cold air masses slide in here, it can get very very cold at night.
Also, I don't complain over high temperatures of 55 degrees, I think it feels great and I wish we had these temperatures a lot more this time of year.
Thankfully so far it may turn out be below normal winter like last winter. I love the warm weather of spring and summer, but its booring to have 70's and 80's all year long, I don't get some of my friends are complaining and would rather have more 80's in december and january. Yuck!!
Highs in the 40's and 50's and lows in the 30's and 20's is perfect winter weather if you ask me, I love this.
UNYSIS GFSX 500 mb Day 4.5 out
To add to that. I don't think many Northerners realize that Florida's climate is much more dynamic than they think. For instance, its pretty for highs in the middle 50s in the Panhandle in the middle of Winter with lows close to freezing. We do not have the 70 or 80 degree whether that Southern and Central Florida has up here in the Panhandle.
Here in Macon, GA it actually started snowing now. Look it up on TWC. It's extremely light though.
They have a 0% chance for NOLA, too, so I guess they expect a lobe of cold, moist air to shoot right down the spine of Florida. Even Okeechobee, which sits at a latitude hundreds of miles farther south than NOLA, currently has a 1% chance.
Cat Returns Home 5 Years After Hurricane Katrina
Everybody say, "Awwwwwwww..." ;-)
4 inches here since yesterday
Many places are under water
When will this end???
The Trinidad and Tobago Meteorological Services is
issuing a riverine flood alert for Trinidad having
regard to the occurrence of persistent rainfall
activity over the last 18 %u2013 24 hours.
This latest rainfall event began favouring the
northeast sector of Trinidad and has already
emptied considerable precipitation to engineer
riverine floods but isolated to this region.
The center is now shifting with maximum
concentrations eclipsing central Trinidad, parts
of North Trinidad and areas of South Trinidad.
These locations are already estimated to have
received between 50 %u2013 60 millimeters of
rainfall.
The atmospheric dynamics is showing a tendency for
the northern fringes of Inter-Tropical Convergence
Zone (ITCZ) to merge with this quasi-stationary
shear line currently affecting both Trinidad and
Tobago. This possible development together with
an upper level trough and highly supportive upper
level flows may broaden the area of instability to
unleash a new burst of energy capable of producing
significant rainfall overnight into tomorrow.
Conservative estimates are for between 75-100
millimeters of rainfall accumulation.
WORDS, MUSIC, & PHOTOGRAPHY: John Lennon. The Day the Music Died.
You just don't get it - do you. The cold is caused by AGW. Simple. Everything is caused by AGW.
My heater is running 24 hours a day. I saw this freekin' surfer guy this morning trying to ride the waves...NOW THAT is crazy.
No it's not.. I live in Macon and while TWC has been saying snow for a while, the snow is very limited and light and is not accumulating.
I would ask RTLSNK what the pretty pink and white clouds are suppose to be over his house.... but I am pretty sure it would not be a printable response :)
I also live in Macon and I've talked with RTLSNK a few times but yeah just a couple flurries here.
I'm not going to ask him.. he is going to blame KOG and I for it anyway :(
Lol. *tiny violin*
Yeah we do haha. The one around here devotes a large portion to boats, which is kind of funny considering we really have no place to put them other than one or two small lakes.
-CR
No, that is an exaggeration and an incorrect stereotype.
Don't forget, most of us either came from somewhere with colder winter weather and/or have lived in such areas. Therefore, we hardly think of 55F as either "cold" or for that matter, at all unpleasant.
I in fact long for 55 degree temps. It is the heat and humidity of summer that I could stand to have less of around here.
What you might read on here next week would be things like this:
"It was 15 degrees on my front porch this morning. Brrrr.."
Or, even more likely...
"Does anyone know what our chances are of getting some snow with this next cold outbreak? I am hoping and praying that we will get rewarded with a nice white coating this time around."
i added another stack of 48 to the other 48 if we are to get him it may as well be good
does the one i won't mention like a white christmas or a green christmas
Yes let me chime in here. I love the cold weather we get in florida. Like this morning 22 degrees and lots of frost. looked like it snowed. Only down in fl because this is were my job is at. Now Alaska that sounds like fun.
more like wed before warm temps start to rtn also another plains low should be getting its act together by then on the building rtn flow this one should pull up the warm air and establish a zonal flow
inside comment
(thats when fans go down for maintenance)
I don't know about the rest of my fellow Floridians, but I just moved here a year and a half ago, spent thou$ands on landscape -- trees -- and now am facing a second winter in a row where I could lose all of it. And on a much grander scale, this type of altered climate for the Eastern US and Western Europe has massive financial implications: Heavier use of heating oil, road salt, the destruction to cars and roads from salt and freezing, lost business, lost wages, more debt, strain on power grid, competition for oil, gas and coal, etc.
On the plus side, it looks like I'll be stimulating the economy with a trip to buy a few hundred little lights to string up in my trees, along with a whole buncha blankets!
I'm glad its warm here.. because its just p*** down rain right now.. The mountains have to be getting hammered with snow
Yes i also agree with the plants getting killed every year. This is florida not supose to happen. I also put out the blankets and if it goes below 25 that dont work, so this time i plugged in a little heater and my trees didnt get the frost we had.
Yah, the negative NAO is an important fact that I learned on this blog (cannot remember if it was Doc or somebody else who brought that out though).
I've actually used that in conversations with folks about the cold.
Actually, I like this here in Houston (except the lack of rain). Just above freezing... plants are still doing well and blooming!
Toronto Pearson Int'l Airport
Date: 7:00 PM EST Wednesday 8 December 2010
Condition: Clear
Pressure: 30.09 inches
Tendency: rising
Visibility: 15 miles
Air Quality Health Index: 3
Temperature: 17.8°F
Dewpoint: 7.2°F
Humidity: 63 %
Wind: WNW 16 mph
Wind Chill: 3
Viewing: 151 - 201
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