Update 02/09/17

In the past month or so in previous posts, I discussed the opportunity for much colder weather arriving between the 10th and 24th with the coldest centered around the 15th of this month.   In one of the posts I had even mentioned brutally cold air, much like occurred in December.   In the last post (read it by clicking here) I talked about some reasons why it was on track.  The biggest reason I gave was the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), that currently is very robust, especially given the supposed base state of a La Nina (although I still say it just barely reached that status depending on the indices that are used).  This MJO will be moving east/southeast in a spatial location of the tropics that would favor Arctic air into the U.S.

BUT, very similar to October the jet stream across the higher latitudes is countering this possibility. Instead of the bulk of the cold air moving into the states, it is instead being restricted to northern Canada and back over across Siberia and the Eurasia region aka what happened during the early fall!  I'm not discounting the possibility of the really cold stuff making it into the high plains later this month, but as of today it's not looking too likely.  We'll see.

The following map may seem confusing....


The green arrow represents the flow aloft (the jet stream) that was in place this 9th day of February.  It was also in this almost EXACT position back in October (around the 8th)! Back then all the cold air that had developed was restricted to far northern Canada and across Siberia, much like what is currently happening.   This was the "beginning" of the atmospheric pattern.  The yellow line/arrows on the above map represents the flow aloft that was in place in December (about 62 days after the beginning of the pattern).  That was enough to allow the brutally cold air to move into the high plains.   But now (again, almost 62 days after the December event) the flow resembles the October pattern.  If that holds, then there ought to be some pretty mild days coming up periodically through February.   The first will be the ridiculous temperatures that are expected this Friday and Saturday!

What about precipitation?  In a couple of posts ago I thought there would be several opportunities this month, and I haven't changed my mind yet.

Looking at this mornings satellite image over the Pacific and western U.S.,

click for a larger version

One of the most notable features was the jet stream that was slamming into the Pacific Northwest with a HUGE ridge poking into southern Canada.  Associated with this jet stream was the red X, a storm system that was pretty strong.  The red dashed line is the projected path of this feature.  I put a couple of question marks by this path down in New Mexico.  There is a bit of uncertainty of the eventual path which will have an impact on expected weather across the plains.  Most likely it will take a path that will be too far south to bring Kansas and Nebraska much precipitation but it will be close!  Most likely Texas and Oklahoma will benefit.  In fact, here is the expected precipitation during the next 7 days (provided by the Weather Prediction Center)....


There still is a chance the system could be farther north, so I'm not discounting the possibility that it will be far enough north to bring some moisture to western Kansas and eastern Colorado.  Most likely that would be late Sunday or Monday.  Just don't count on it, but hope it does occur.

Beyond this system, the weather picture is a bit muddied.   That MJO, that I discussed above, could provide a surprise later next week and into the weekend.  We're not done with winter by any stretch.  I've heard rumblings about an early Spring.  Define what an early Spring is and I can address that.  At this very early stage, I would go as far as mentioning a late freeze (after climatological normal) later this spring.  More on that later.

I'll shoot for an update around the 14th/15th.