"Early Winter" will be making a retreat

The advertised cold that persisted this week is starting to retreat, as it should this time of the fall.  The lowest temperatures with this event fell into the middle 20s across many areas of high plains, with just about every location reaching at least freezing.  This morning (Thursday) the coldest reading I saw was 24 at several locations, but I'd bet there were colder temperatures in preferred lower lying areas.  The advertised precipitation this week fell as mainly liquid although there were occasional bursts of sleet and wet snow.  Here is a map of precipitation, which where it did fall was actually a bit higher than expected....

Now it appears the pattern will go back into the expected drier regime for the high plains, and initially much warmer.  There will be another cold front early next week but it won't be too cold, just not as warm.  Later in the week another cold shot will arrive and it should get as at least as cold as this weeks.  At this point there is NO indication of a wet storm through at least the first part of Thanksgiving week.

This mornings upper air chart...

The stage is starting to set up for a build up of very cold air across the higher latitudes of Siberia and higher latitudes of Europe.  It will likely be a while before that is unleashed into the lower latitudes.  There has been a strong hint of this happening around Thanksgiving but at this point it could occur across the eastern U.S., or even stay across the "other side".  Any precipitation of significant should stay way out west and also east of the high plains, at least until at least Thanksgiving week.  Of course, the pattern is still in the formative stage so a "surprise" pattern shift is still possible.   

As far as a winter outlook, I'm holding off just a bit longer to access the early stages of this new pattern. There are already forecasts in place by various sources but those are based on the fact that La Nina is in place.  As I'll show in the next posting, the average weather (both temps and precip) has been extremely variable in those La Nina winters.  More next time....

The outlook from the Weather Prediction Center through next Thursday....