Sunday, September 11, 2011

Tranquility Returns

After a rough and wild ride weather-wise, the atmosphere is calming down for the eastern US.  We still have the remnants of Lee to deal with through Monday as a cut-off upper low gradually fills and vacates the upper Ohio Valley.  What this means for us is that a weakness or boundary or stationary front (call it what you will) will continue to be in our region lying in an east-west fashion.  Thus with the heating of the day, don't be surprised to still have a heavy downpour seeing the atmosphere still has ample leftover moisture thanks to the tropics moving over us this last week!  Here is the latest WV image to show the boundary (marked in red).  What is to come for mid-week and beyond is north of the blue dotted line.

And what is north of that blue dashed line is a plethora of cool air.  This will be our first genuine autumnal outbreak over the eastern half of North America.  Frosts will be observed over many states later this week in the Great Lake States, the Northern Plains, and New England.  I would not be surprised to see reports of frost in the hollows of northern PA!  Here is the deviation from normal from the GEFS for later this week.  Remember, this is an average, so often times when extremes are shown, they manifest in an even more extreme manner.
That is a very widespread area of below normal, with that very welcome -18F bulls-eye over KS and OK.  As for us look for temps to be about 15F below normal for Friday with daytime highs struggling to reach 65F!  Here is the official max temp map put out by HPC for this upcoming football Friday.  I do believe many places in New England will remain in the 50s for highs Friday and Saturday.
And all of this fine autumn weather is compliments of our friends from the north.  It is being sent to us via this huge high pressure system as it drifts slowly SE from the source regions of the hinterlands of the lands of Manitoba and Saskatchewan.  Some modeling has the high pressure at +1034mb...if it were January, we'd be looking at potentially a sub-zero day here in PA!  The cool air will not blast in, but it will come in waves and be here in earnest (and in Harrisburg) by Thursday.  The low pressure NE of Nova Scotia is the remnants of Maria which SHOULD stay east of the east coast of the US this week...again compliments to this huge high pressure advecting SE from O' Canada.
So a return to tranquility atmospherically...and a return to normalcy as much as humanly possible as the weather events of the last couple weeks around here have made for some hardships amongst our friends, family, and peers.  And through all of this nasty weather, it is still somewhat refreshing to see that some things don't change.  I was hoping and hoodwinked early that PSU could play on the same field as Alabama.  However, that 'Bama team is solid:  solid O, strong and quick D, and fundamentally sound.  3 turnovers is simply unacceptable when playing any team, let alone a team that is superior.  The methodical movement of the ball by the Tide was textbook!  Nothin' Fancy, just pound the football and make some plays when throwing the ball down field.  Pretty simple!  At least the Phillies held up their end of the bargain and did not make my sports Saturday a total loss.  Now let's sweep the Brew-Crew and send a message for this October.

Have a great Sunday and a good upcoming week....and hopefully a time to dry out.

Smitty

AA:  Get through Monday with the threat of some pop up showers and then dry and cooler will be the rule this week.  Actually chilly to some Thursday-Saturday!

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