Bud Popping Warmth

It's amazing to me at how the warm weather of this past week allowed for the vegetation in our area to awaken from its deep winter slumber.  As I observed the shrubs and trees on our property, much of the deciduous dendrology want to display their spectacular springtime splendor!  To be sure, this past week's temps were much above normal for our immediate area, but what we experienced both Thursday and Friday is quite common along the southern CA coast during the summer months.  A cool marine layer of air was creeping westward from the cold Atlantic and had a major impact on both the temps and the sky cover.  Take a look at Thursday's max temps and note how east of KMDT as well as the Great Lakes region the cold water greatly affected the high temps!  It was at least 20ºF cooler over in Philly east to NJ than it was here!  I believe that 99ºF in western KT is where all of the global warming stories were originating this week.  I don't know about y'all, but I for one am tired of all of this GW hype.  Let these media outlet reps travel to AK and do a GW story where AK is suffering from their worst winter in memory!  Sorry I digress....But the map below is pretty neat.....don't cha think?

Just to compare the above map to what normal we should expect for max temps around St. Patty's Day.  These are the 30 year means (max/min) for the NE quarter of the nation.....

This anomalous warmth will continue through all of next week.  Take a look at the 7 Day Running Means for the period ending next Friday!  Average of the temps for the NEXT 7 DAYS...wow!

The map below doesn't look too different.  It is simply the forecast deviation from normal mean for just ONE DAY, specifically next Thursday.  This is the high tide of heat at the surface.  By the way, note the persistent cold up in our 49th state!  Weather is simply a balancing act of the unequal distribution of solar radiation onto the big blue marble!

The high tide of heat of the upper atmosphere up at about 18,000' will occur on Tuesday.  Take a look...

Frankly, the GFS operational is bullish on these higher than normal heights for its entire run into the early parts of April.  However, there is great discrepancy amongst many of the members of the ensembles and what I am showing you below is a close-up of this mangled mess over the lower 48 and how the WHITE LINE OPERATIONAL is clearly the outlier of the remainder of the ensembles in terms of having a huge ridge here in the east.  When one sees something like this, it often signals a change in the pattern is occurring and the numerical modeling struggles greatly during these periods!  But that song and dance will be a different story for a different day....

Back to next week, I am concerned that an easterly flow will keep us here in southern PA from enjoying 80ºF temps.  Here is a prog of the winds about 1000' up...As you can see, there is a SE fetch which would keep us cooler than places up in NY!  Now isn't that ironic?

Also note the strong winds over LA, AR, and MO.  This could be an ugly week as some severe wx signatures are beginning to appear for the mid-week period in the area of the Arklotex region.  Here is the 500 mb trough which is loaded for bear!

And the associated heavy precip that will accompany said storminess...

That trough then slowly migrates eastward towards PA for next weekend.  Cut-off low; wx-man's woe!

So there you go.... so much to study in this highly amplified pattern as is so often the case in the transition season we call spring.  Over the years, a few old-timers have told me that the time to plant you pea seeds is St. Patty's Day.  Well, I've done that few times only to be disappointed with the yield of my early season veggies.  I believe this year if you plant on St. Patty's Day, you'll not be disappointed!  To be sure, we will have some coolish wx coming up this spring, but once those seeds germinate in the warmer than normal soils, the hearty cool season plantings will do just fine.  My seeds often laid dormant and eventually rotted in the heavy wet cold March soil.  Not this year!  Heck, the soil is actually DRY!  Can you believe that?  After 70+" of rain in 2011!  Unreal!  You know it is all because of Anthropogenic Global Warming....this crazy wx!  And just to show you how crazy, the Euro just came in and low and behold, it has a major winter type storm for the Mid-Atlantic next weekend!

Enjoy the anomalous warmth this upcoming week...because I believe we may be on borrowed time as the modeling is beginning to sense & struggle with the potential pattern change as we are now going to begin to observe as we end March and enter April.  Time will only tell.......

Seeing that it is St. Patty's Day and a Saturday, I'll leave y'all with a rockin' Irish jig.  I became familiar with this tune and ultimately the group when I heard the song in the movie The Departed.  I'm not much of a movie guy, but that is one movie I thoroughly enjoyed!  And I hope you enjoy this song as performed at the NHL winter classic at Fenway Park in 2010...

Enjoy your St. Patty's Day, your week's end, & your March Madness (Lehigh...really?? over Duke...wow!).  Or just kick back and relax.  After all, this is the last official weekend of the winter of 2011-12.

Smitty

AA:  A warm week of wx upcoming.  Am worried about SE flow keeping temps cooler than they might otherwise be.  Looking at a pattern change for end of month into April!