Long-range Thoughts....

I talked a little about the long-range in my video yesterday. I will say this, many Winter forecasts, including mine, may be in jeopardy. I, being a snow fan, hope that my outlook doesn't play out.

My forecast for December worked out pretty well. I forecast an active December with below average temperatures. That indeed did play out. Most of the Eastern half of the country experienced below average temperatures for December with the exception of Maine. We had four bouts with wintry weather here in Statesville, NC during December. Dates were the 4th, 12th, 16th, and 25th. We had a close call to our South and East on the 18th. That's what I call an active month. The monthly total of snowfall at my house was 8". That's well over our normal of 1"! Our average snowfall for a complete winter is around 7.5" so thanks to our Christmas Day storm we are already above normal in snowfall which makes my forecast for below avg. snowfall this winter a bust. Because of the die-hard snow fan I am, having that part of the forecast be a bust is absolutely fine with me. Here's a preliminary snowfall accumulation map from Christmas Day...

 

Now that we have December done with we look ahead to the rest of this Winter. Like I mentioned earlier in the post my forecast for an above average January and February may be in jeopardy. After this very short burst of warmer air moves through this weekend, the pattern will transition back to below average temperatures. The NAO will remain negative as we head into the first half of January and will be west-based which will aid in keeping us below normal. The AO tries to trend into the positive zone only to fall back by mid-month. Another interesting thing is that the PNA tries to remain neutral and even tries to jump into the positive region for the first half of January. That helps us to get bigger storm systems to come up the East Coast and produce wintry weather around the region.  There will also be a trough over the Gulf of Alaska and the Southeast US like in December. Overall these things tell me that January looks to be another month with below average temps. As cold as December was? Some models are indicating it, but I won't go that far quite yet. Some cold outbreaks that could rival those in December are possible. 

So, colder than average temperatures. What about snow? I think we will have our chances at some wintry precip. as we go into January, but not as many back-to-back as we had last year. I still think that ice is going to be one of our issues as we go through the rest of Winter. We have already had one ice "event". So, we only need one more to verify my forecast. I think we have a good chance at seeing at least one more 3"+ snow and at least one ice event that causes power outages, spotty at the least.

Well, I better get off of here, but that's my thoughts as of now. Still no video until Friday or Saturday, but I'll keep you up to date via posts. 

As always, Thanks for Viewing and God Bless You!