Weather It Is (More Rumours, More Questions)

Good Evening:

It's obvious to all that winter arrived, and that winter has "decided" to stay around.

The last storm brought periods of rain, and actually created flooding in areas down south.

All of our high resolution forecasts depend on the quality of the global model forecasts.  When these go bad, our forecasts go bad.  When these forecasts are good, our forecasts can be substantially better.
I've actually received some complaints about rain that fell early, or didn't fall at all.  We live in a small country and sometimes the weather systems that pass through are actually pretty small too, and they are not well resolved by the global models.  It's a little like trying to see the details without the bifocals.

Anyway, I keep hearing rumours -- in fact more than rumours -- that the next snow storm is just around the corner.  Yet, we don't live in NY (where they are expecting 5 to 10 inches), where the typical winter storm track brings the potential for a big snow.  Our big snows come from an atypical track that arrives from the north  (Siberia), passing over Turkey; otherwise, most storms come from the northern Europe, and pass over the sea, where the warm sea tends to mitigate any real cold.  Sometimes these western arriving storms bring lots of rain, but they are typically not -- as just noted -- as cold as their northern arriving cousins, and hence the potential for severe winter weather is less.

So, the rumours are just rumours, and the only thing we see is more winter cold and the potential for rain early next week.

Barry Lynn