The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly

First, the good:  The sensible wx for Thanksgiving into Saturday dominated by high pressure.  That is the easy part!

Now the bad: The more things change, the more they stay the same.  With that deep moisture fetch from the tropical Pacific, I was concerned about flooding rains in our area.  My concerns were quickly verified early Tuesday as I was traipsing through the woods of the Michaux Forest.  What I was believing would be a few scattered showers until noonish quickly evolved into a steady moderate to at times heavy rain.  Ziggy looked like a drowned otter while Zola appeared like a drowned rat; however, they were both loving life.  Treeing a groundhog, chasing an unsuspecting deer, all the while terrorizing any chipmunk or squirrel unfortunate enough to not have taken shelter in a rock pile or nook in a hollowed out fallen log.  The trail was swamped and the tiny forest streams became challenging rock-hops with the rainfall.  Here are some river situations as of the this writing:

Yellow Breeches...

Swatara Creek...

Conodoguinet Creek...

Sherman Creek...

And that is following a dry November for the 1st couple weeks!  Here at my humble abode, I received 2.39 inches of rainfall from 6 am Tuesday up until this writing.  So, what else is new as we are now approaching 70" of rainfall for 2011!  Unbelievable!!!  Global warming I'm sure to blame!

Now the ugly:  These are some ugly progs from the GFS for next week early and then next weekend.  The pattern is certainly changing and with that comes numerous forecasting challenges.  Whenever the upper air is progged to be so convoluted, we have issues.  Take a look at these model's depictions for next week.  Highly amplified is an understatement!

First 500 mb vorticity (spin or energy if you will)...

Now the jet stream as shown by the 300 mb chart for next Wednesday...

And the same jet for next weekend, now that is one deep trough!

This trough will allow the cold air that has been bottled up in O Canada and Alaska to this point.  It now will have a mechanism to advect SE towards the lower 48.  And it is quite cold...here are the 850 mb temps progged for next weekend.  They are ugly if not accompanied with winter's white! 

And that is a different story for a different day...So there you be; the good, the bad, and the ugly! 

Have a great Thanksgiving holiday!

Smitty

AA:  The rain is basically over.  Now the wx improves through Saturday.  Begins to get unsettled and potentially wild beginning later Sunday into next week.  Very difficult forecast for early next week, but then getting much colder later half of next week.  The District 3 AAAA football final on Dec 2 looks to be held in quite cold conditions!