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Joe Bastardi's Column
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Meteorological Outlook: January 31, 2001
The thoughts expressed in this column represent Joe Bastardi's personal speculation. While
they are considered in formulating AccuWeather forecasts, the opinions of many other
AccuWeather meteorologists are also considered.
This discussion is updated only the days that Joe is available, usually Monday-Friday. Check
the date above and come back often!
NOTE: I am now including a glossary of some of the terms used at the
end of each discussion. This will be added to from time to time as the
need arises.
For the streaming video folks, we are on Yahoo.com now and you can
catch the long-range forecast there, so you can SEE some of the methods
behind the madness.
2 MAJOR BUCKLINGS INTO THE EAST NEXT 7 DAYS AS
CANADA CHILLS DOWN THE NEXT 1-2 WEEKS, UPPING
STORM POTENTIAL ANTE NATIONWIDE FOR FEBRUARY.
Now let me preface this by saying I am not forecasting an East Coast
snowstorm Friday and Friday night. Got that? Great. However, I do
regret taking the option off the table Tuesday when I specifically said
Monday that I would wait for today. I violated one of my own rules and it
may come back to haunt me, since basically there is now no way to be
right for Friday and Friday night. If there is no storm, well then my
speculation was trash in the first place. If there is a storm, heh, I jumped in
with everyone else in calling it off. And once you call something off, you
can't conveniently point to a forecast before and say, that is the one I was
talking about. So let's just start anew and I will understand that no matter
what the outcome, it isn't a chest thumper for me.
One thing we do know is the trough will deepen like mad through the
lakes and into the East in the Thursday-Saturday period. We also know
there will be a 24-48 period of Siberian air coming down through the
northern Plains Thursday into Friday, the Appalachians Friday into
Saturday, and the Northeast Friday night into Sunday morning. Let's take
a look at Minneapolis. Remember Tuesday it had a low of 6 and high of
28 predicted for Friday on the models. Now its minus 3 and 13. So
instead of a mean of 17, it's now 5. I suspect before it's done, it will go
even colder. The coldest temperature in Minneapolis in January was minus
7. This will be the coldest feeling air mass in over a month, if not actually
for you folks east of line from Bismark to Kansas City into the lakes and
Ohio Valley. Not so sure further northeast, where the cold could modify if
the East Coast system cranks since the shot would come from the
northwest if a storm deepens and there were some fairly good shots in
early January. Our Boston and New York numbers are coming down for
Saturday on the models, but not as much as I think they will go, and I
suspect the trend will continue so that Saturday morning dawns with wind
chills near or below 0 from Philadelphia northeast. Take a look at the obs
at Churchill on the west shore of Hudson Bay if you get a chance. That is
Siberian-seeded air.
Now about the Friday system. The problem with predicting a big storm is
that we will have a double frontal structure with the arctic front Friday
morning along the west slopes of the Appalachians and the polar front off
shore. Both may have lows on them, both with areas of precipitation, the
former snow, the latter rain. In some respects, it is similar synoptically to
the double structure storm of Dec. 18-20. To refresh. A band of snow
developed just behind the arctic front that was coming from the west and
dumped 3-6 inches from western New England to west Virginia. The rich
moisture stayed separate, though, and east off shore, so when the snow
finally swung into the coastal plain, it was a bunch of coatings to 1 inches,
with a massive cry of rip off from the snow patrol that lives in there. A
similar situation may be lining up here. But we will put it back into the
speculatory category now and elaborate more on it Thursday. After all, to
quote the New Jersey philosopher Springsteen, Bruce from his immortal
tale of Atlantic City, "Everything dies baby, that's a fact. But maybe
everything that dies, some day comes back."
Now further west with this we can expect widespread coatings to an inch
or two to show up from Minnesota all the way into Kentucky, and the day
after the front will be a heck of a lot different from the day before. Given
the overall warmth of the past few weeks (Chicago has not had a high in
the teens since Jan. 2, for instance), I am issuing a rude shock watch for
behind this front. It will be changed to a warning as conditions warrant.
And now for the weekend and early next week. The leader of the pack
with this potential attack is the Canadian ensemble. This is the wettest I
have seen it this winter in such a widespread swath in the East, and it fits
with the idea stated here a couple of weeks ago that we are going into a
wetter and wetter pattern east of the Mississippi. (So, it has to be right,
right? Yeah, right.) However, I have always liked the Canadian ensembles
best because instead of just the MRF based model tweaked a bunch of
ways, it is several different models tweaked several ways. In any case, the
10-day means across Canada are near to slightly above average
temperature with it down tremendously from where they were 10 to 20
days ago when forecasted means in central Canada were 6-12 degrees
above average. Considering how warm western Canada is now, and the
forecasted 10-day mean near averages, it would mean it has got to cool a
heck of a lot to balance the warm start to the period. In any case, further
south it is all lathered up about the storm potential Sunday into Tuesday in
the eastern United States, so here comes the gut feeling which I will stick
to this time until Saturday, on which day it will become a forecast. Low
pressure will move across the Great lakes Sunday and then into Quebec
Monday. This will spread a swath of snow through the Upper Midwest
and lakes Saturday and Sunday, but most of this will stay north of 40
north and will not reach the big East Coast cities. The last in the series of
money in the bank systems from the Southwest trough will kick out and
start lowering pressures in the lower Mississippi Valley Sunday. In
response to deepening in the Gulf of Alaska and northeast of Hawaii, the
ridge will amplify near the West Coast and the trough then deepens into
the Mississippi Valley Monday and to near 80 west near Tuesday. This
picks the gulf low up and takes it northeast up the Eastern Seaboard. The
places that may get a lot of snow are the ones where the rule "it snows
where it wants to snow" may be the golden rule here. A band of snow that
forms Sunday night into Monday along the front between the departing
northern low and the developping southern system could be the place
where any southern system would eventually dump its heaviest snow. That
may be anywhere from Arkansas to the Virginias or Arkansas to the
eastern lakes. I think we will start to see the start of this band Sunday in
the lower Ohio Valley to Arkansas, and it will grow heavier on its way
east and northeast Sunday night and Monday, and of course, once east of
the mountains you will have to root the new cold air mass in if you want
snow. These are questions that can just be raised and not answered yet,
unless you want me to make a different statement every day through
Sunday, then claim the one that verifies as my forecast. I promise this time
to hold with the general outline until Saturday, though. If I study something
for two days, I should not abandon it until 2 days before the fact, since
more often than not I have seen that come back to haunt me.
We have beaten the cold air in northwestern Canada horse enough so let
it suffice to say that depending on which model you like, it either does or
does not appear up there. I will stay with this idea: Each high that builds
from seeded Siberian air comes in a little farther west with a little more
extensive cold and by the middle and later part of next week, we have
large high pressure covering all of northwest and central Canada looking
to cause problems in the jet running underneath, as well as spreading out
into the States. However, in light of the challenges of the next 7 days, for
today any talk of future cold takes a back seat.
But enough talk of things of the past. Remember the Alamo? 0 there on
this day in 1949 for the coldest ever in San Antonio. That must have been
a heck of a map. On this day in 1937, Portland, Oregon, 16 inches of
snow. In 1990, we were closing the books on a January that was very
warm nationwide. From Atlantic City to Sioux Falls warmest on records
occurred and south into Texas. While this one was warm, it was as close
to being like Jan 1990 as I am to winning Mr. Olympia. Sioux Falls, for
instance, was 15 degrees above average, while this month was 5. Atlantic
City was 10 above average, this month .4 And Texas in Jan 1990 was
5-10 above average, this month normal to 3 below. An interesting tid bit
about Atlantic City that year, above-normal snowfall, but nothing
measurable in calender winter. And Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's
and Easter all snow covered! Yep I am into body building but I have
finally realized that I will not win the Olympia, and the month of Jan 2001
was warm on a whole, but it was no January 1990. And in my opinion,
only the good Lord above knows what the rest of winter brings, though I
have tried to make a guess, and the ground hog will weigh in on Friday...If
there are no "accidents" before.
Wow, what a range of opinions...divine intervention, man and rodent.
We've come a long way in forecasting over the last 100 years, haven't
we?
Ciao for now.
Some terms used in discussions:
Cross-polar flow: The flow of air from one continent to the other in the
Northern Hemisphere over the polar regions where it can get colder due
to darkness. The tracking of such air masses is crucial since the stability of
arctic air masses cannot be handled by long range computer guidance,
resulting in mammoth long-range busts by those who live and die by
models.
NAO: The North Atlantic Oscillation, which is the pressure pattern
created over the north Atlantic. The different phases of the oscillation are
correlated with different temperature profiles in the land masses
surrounding the Atlantic. As mentioned before, a negative phase of this
combined with cross-polar flow can lead to outstanding cold weather for
much of the nation.
EL NINO: Condition of warmer-than-average water in the equatorial
Pacific.
LA NINA: Condition of colder-than-average water in the equatorial
Pacific.
EL CABONG: Quick Draw McGraw alter ego that fights crime with
sidekick Bob-A-Looey.
LA-LA: one of the Tel-e-Tubbies.
Teleconnections: Patterns over different areas of the world that may be a
result of or a key to patterns in other areas of the world. I have named
different ones after the people who taught them to me.
Models MRF medium range forecast (US) ETA, ETAX, NGM Other
United States models. Ensembles: A group of models run with different
tweeking in an effort to get a general sense of the movement of the mean
troughs and ridges.
Eurga: The European UKMET The United Kingdom model.
Canadian GEM: short range model much like the ETA. Canadian SEF is
their equivalent of our MRF.
NOGAPS: Navy long-range model, and Arnold Schwarzenegger's smile
before he started bodybuilding.
NYU "Money in the Bank": Closed low that gets "stuck" in the Southwest
for a couple of days, then comes out as a big precipitation-maker.
YMCA: Hit record by the Village People.
More to be added as I pull them out of the air. (Where else would a
meteorologist get these from?) |
