Weather It Is (Snow Cold?)

Good Evening:

1) Winter Cold into Sunday Morning

2) Periods of rain and thunderstorms with hail.

3) Snow possible on the higher peaks, including Jerusalem late Friday night into Shabbat Morning.

4) Flooding possible in east central and southern areas.

5) Strong early storm possible late next week.

Some of you might remember that winter didn't really start until the last week of December.  But, soon after that there were 5 successive storms that led to severe flooding in many areas.  Then, contrary to the seasonal forecasts issued for January, February, and March, the wet weather continued until now, and the last week of March looks especially rainy.

With our unusually cold and rainy weather this week comes an unusual weather map for this time of year.  There is high pressure over England and high pressure over Siberia.  In between there are areas of low pressure moving from west to east across the Mediterranean.  As we wrote about last time, one of them has rejoined with the polar front and stalled in our area.  Cold air continues to seep into this system from Siberia, and as we have moved closer to Shabbat forecasts have progressively turned colder, including the latest 12 UTC Global Ensemble Forecast System.

Cold air in the lower atmosphere (at 850 mb) will arrive tonight, while colder air in the middle atmosphere (700 mb) will arrive tomorrow (Friday).  The upper level cold at 500 mb should arrive Friday night and temperatures at 500 mb should approach -30 Celcius towards morning.  Because this cold air is arriving at night, conditions will be ideal for cooling temperatures throughout the country, and especially at the higher elevations of the Jerusalem mountains and Galilee.  Snow is also possible on the Golan, and likely on the Hermon.  Forecasts produced with a high resolution model already show ice and hail Friday into the early morning. We hope to produce a very high resolution forecast Friday morning.

These cold temperatures are certainly unusual for this time of year, and are most likely in part due to the fact that the coldest temperatures in the northern hemisphere have been bottled up in the highest latitudes most winter, so there is still winter cold to come around.

Will they lead to a late season period of snow late Friday night into Shabbat morning?

Stay tuned.

Barry Lynn