In the post I did on the 19th (click here to read it), I showed how the Gulf of Mexico moisture had made a run a the western high plains. It made it into west Texas through southeast Kansas which is a change and "could" be a good sign later in March. That moisture and the overall configuration of the jet stream brought record flooding rains to much of the Arklatex region and into the Tennessee Valley. Rainfall of 5 to 10 inches was common with a large area of over ten inches as you can see on the map below. The largest observed amount I found was in northeast Texas where 13.82 inches was recorded. The high plains got very little from this setup (mainly less than a tenth of an inch - some areas just a few hundredths of an inch). BTW, that is an incredible amount of moisture for the central and eastern Cornbelt (3 to 7 inches of rain). With frozen ground, I'm sure how much this benefited the region.
Looking at the satellite image...the pattern is still changing. There was a deepening system across the western U.S. and the eventual upper level low will be situated over Arizona by mid-week. Here is the satellite image from this morning...
This in most years would be an extremely favorable position and pattern to bring widespread precipitation to the high plains. BUT, the background pattern is going to work AGAINST this storm as it appears the system will reach it's maximum magnitude across Arizona and New Mexico before it turns east and northeast towards the central U.S. as it weakens considerably! This is extremely frustrating to see this type of system behave this way. I might add, this is NOT a good sign going forward into spring.
The pattern that we are currently going into resembles what was in place during October. At that point the brutally cold air dropped into Europe and Siberia. The same cold is occurring at this point although I'm still thinking the cold will slosh back to our side of the hemisphere in March. I'll update later this week towards Friday when I get some more time.
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