Weather It Is (The Clock Ticks)

Good Evening:


The good thing about uncertainty is that just about anything is possible. For instance, as a storm develops near Greece on Saturday it will move quickly across the Mediterranean. As high pressure develops to its northwest, it will help direct frigid winter air into the storm's circulation.

Should we freeze the fishes, we're less likely to freeze our raindrops.  B y "we," I mean the processes of mother nature, and not us who feel like we're following an unfolding drama. If the cold air is injected further eastward, we'll have a better chance for snow.

In any case, from Monday onwards next week looks to be periodically quite wet.

The combination of a strong negative Arctic Oscillation coupled with a strongly negative North Atlantic Oscillation coupled with a very active El-Nino is playing havoc with our forecast models.  What this means is that the processes that might possibly indicate long range changes in our weather are being very poorly sampled (as the first two indices in this list indicate strong perturbations in the arctic circulation).

For instance, earlier today the GFS showed a massive area of cold air over the eastern United States speeding eastward and bumping our developing storm further eastward than previous forecast (good for us). Six hours later the impact of the same massive cold was not nearly as dramatically forecast.

The result is that single (deterministic) forecast runs change both the intensity, the direction from which it arrives, and the position of next weeks storm, while the ensembles refuse to reach a consensus.

As you probably know: timing and delivery is pretty much everything in show business and this drama won't be better sketched out until some of the energy (cold-air) moves into a better location (where planes fly, balloons are launch, and there enough people to note its passing).

Barry Lynn