Weather It Is (A Remarkable Storm?)

Good Afternoon:

The forecast is remarkably consistent.  It is remarkable in two ways: that it continues to indicate the potential for cold winter storm about 9 to 10 days out, and it also indicates that nothing is too certain.

For instance, the highest resolution forecast model, the GFS, consistently shows a ridge of warmer air building across Europe and eventually amplifying into far northern Europe. About a week from now a southern Jet Stream storm moves into the eastern Mediterranean.  The combination of the ridge and southern stream allows for a coupling of the two streams and winter time cold plunges southward by the end of the week.

When we see something like this, we look to the GFS ensemble for confirmation.  However, we see only hints of this storm in the ensemble, making me think that this is a relatively small scale feature that is best resolved by the GFS (but not the ensemble -- 13 km vs 50 km resolution).  We saw this in the Friday evening storm in January.  Normally, I would ignore such a small scale feature but the GFS refuses to drop it. True, it was originally forecast to arrive early next week, but for the last few days it has been present at the end of the week.

Until then, temperatures will be on the rise so that we will have a string of pleasant weather days.  The temperatures should rise until Shabbat, and then fluctuate at relatively warm weather until the arrival of the next system. We can tell that temperatures will dive back down to today's like chill, but how chilly is a matter of conjecture.

Perhaps we need to wait for the Purim story to be written again this year to know how our weather will play out next week.

Purim Samaech,

Barry Lynn