Update - March 13, 2015

First, I want to take just a minute and show what the winter temperatures were like across the United States, compared to normal.  Back in early November I did an update to my original winter forecast. That post can be found by clicking here.  My temperature outlook for December-January_February was:

The actual was the following image:

I would say I failed miserably across the northeast but did ok across the remainder of the country.  Do you agree?

The "experts" from the Climate Prediction Center had the following forecast for the same period:

For Dodge City, the following is what it looked like:

We ended up just  a tad above normal for the winter month composite:

Currently:

Wow there is a lot of precipitation falling to the south and east of the central plains!

The cause is a deep upper low over northeast Texas and surface low over southern Arkansas.  But, no snow!  There was light rain and snow across the central and southern Rockies as a moist flow was in place.  Another anomalously deep low over Mexico brought SNOW to  parts of Mexico City!  WOW!

The Outlook

In the previous post done on March 3rd, (see it by clicking here) I briefly mentioned two periods in particular that should be remembered.  The first period I mentioned was from March 21st through 26nd.  The second was April 4th through 24th.

Looking at the patterns established across the northern hemisphere, I think the jet stream and upper level flow should look similar to the following around the equinox of spring:

If this comes to pass, there ought to be a significant cooling period starting around the 21st and it should last several days.  At the same time, there should be at least some precipitation across the high plains.  IF cold air is available, some of this precipitation could be rain.   IF everything comes together just right, there could even be a blizzard with the best chance of that happening across northeast Colorado, northwest Kansas and southwest Nebraska, although other parts of the high plains could be in the mix too.  That is a ways out so details are absolutely impossible to pin point.

After that brief period of cold/possible precipitation, it should warm up dramatically by the 1st of April.  But that will be short lived as the next cold phases gets established.

For the second period of April 4-24, the pattern should look similar to:

If this comes to pass, there will be very cold (April standards) air penetrating into the central plains at times.  Although not every day during this stretch (4th-24th) will see below normal temperatures, the majority of the time it will be colder than normal.  The graph I posted on the 6th still seems very plausible.  You can see that by clicking here.  I still think an April snow or two is likely, especially west of the 100th meridian.