IT'S FRIDAY!
We are heading into the holiday season next week and the weather pattern is going through a major change. It does now appear likely that a storm will affect our local area around Thanksgiving Day. As this weather pattern reveals itself more and more every day, we are getting closer to identifying the cycle in this years LRC. There are likely three major longwave features that keep showing up. I will talk about one of them now, and when our winter forecast comes out Monday night we will go into extensive detail on what we believe to be a fascinating weather pattern, one that will bring some rather wild weather across parts of the nation this winter.
One of the features that has shown up a few times already is a split flow near the west coast of the United States. Look at the map below:
The flow aloft is splitting big time just off the west coast of the United States by early next week. This map, above, is valid at midnight next Wednesday night and it shows a storm that has dropped into the southwest part of the nation centered near Salt Lake City, UT. Just upstream, or northwest of this developing storm is where the split is located. Notice how the flow at 500 mb takes off to the north going way up into northern Canada. This is the northern branch of the jet stream. The southern branch of the jet stream breaks off and heads south, off the California coast curving around into the southern plains. This set up almost guarantees that we will experience some kind of a storm later next week, right around the day after Thanksgiving. When the flow splits like this the models have a very difficult time and make many major errors. If you have been paying close attention to the computer models then you know they have been all over the place offering many different solutions for the holiday week and beyond. So, confidence may be growing that we will have a storm later next week, but at the same time there are still many questions that will slowly be answered in the coming days.
There is a very good chance that the split will lead to a very high amplitude weather pattern in about 10 days. A big ridge will likely develop near the west coast of Canada or just off shore during this extended forecast period and we have to watch this carefully for our first signs of Arctic air mass generation.
The 06z GFS run has a snowstorm near Kansas City within a week. And, this is something that is possible, but as discussed above with the developing split flow the computer models are making major errors after day one. So, we will be monitoring the holiday week forecast and updating it as we get closer. We will be making some special graphics to describe all of this today and tonight on NBC Action News. Jeremy Nelson will keep you advised on the trends over the weekend, so check back in Saturday and Sunday. And, then Monday night at 10 PM........The NBC Action News Winter Forecast. I will be doing an extended on-line version by sometime Tuesday as well.
Yesterday, Stormy and I went to the "Thanks for Seniors" Thanksgiving meal in Mission, KS. Here are a couple of pictures. It was really a great and fun event. Thank you for having us there!
Have a great weekend!
Gary