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!



Yes, It's Warm

But look at just how warm!  Today we achieved a high temp of 71ºF; much cooler than I had thought due to an easterly flow until noon!  Temps around Philly and most of NJ were in the upper 40s and low 50s most of today!  Here were the temps from 6 pm EDT March 15, 2012.  The maxes around KMDT were a couple of hours earlier in the day, but what is impressive are the temperatures being registered out in southern WI and in the greater Chicago region!  Also note the NE wind at Milwaukee keeping them downright cold compared to obs sites nearby!  Unreal!

And here are the departures from the 30 year average...again simply off the charts!

With the exception of the west coast and the extreme NE part of the country, specifically ME, the rest of the country is experiencing above normal temps!  Beware of the Ides of March?  Below is a map of the max temps from yesterday.  Big Ten country was smokin' hot for March 14!  Again note how Green Bay completely influences the temps in northeast WI!

Here is the prog for max temps for Friday.  The mid 70s look to be in order once again!

But these maxes are contingent upon the forecasted west wind.  Next week when the west wind really kicks in, we will be at and above 80ºF both Tuesday and Wednesday I do believe!

Again, I remind y'all what can occur at this time of year and this is the 19th anniversary of some brutally cold wx that followed the Super Storm of 1993!  We registered a record low of 7ºF on March 15 at KMDT!  Here is what the Super Storm left in its wake!

By the way, the high tide of heat in terms of the upper air pattern will be next Tuesday and Wednesday.  Look at this much amplified 500 mb pattern early-mid next week!  All i can say is "Wow!"

Enjoy this weather whilst it lasts!

Smitty

AA:  Continued unseasonably warm through next week!

Tijuana Trough

Just take a look at the progged 500 mb level trough diving all the way to Tijuana for this Sunday morning!  This will be news-breaking weather to follow for those of you who are so inclined!

Just had to share the latest run!

Smitty

AA:  Wild southern CA wx upcoming this weekend!

Very Warm Weather To Continue

Yesterday, KMDT reached 75ºF which is +25ºF above the normal max of 50ºF, but 7ºF below the record of 82ºF set in 1990.  We will continue to see very warm temperatures as a westerly flow brings warm air from the nation's mid-section towards the Mid Atlantic region.  The cold water in the Atlantic does pose a minor problem if a stronger NE flow could develop and allow for a backdoor front to work its way SW towards eastern PA.  However, that does not look likely until Sunday.  It will cool from the high tide of heat today where a few thermometers will tickle 80ºF by mid-afternoon.  If the clouds stay at bay, coupled with the dry ground, temps will climb to that 80ºF mark in some areas in southern PA!  What a difference 19 years make...we hit a record low of 9ºF with a fresh deep snowpack from the "Storm of the Century" from March 1993!  Take a look at the map from that infamous storm!  Look at that March bomb!  No March blizzards this year!

Although the wx isn't all peachy keen everywhere in the states...look at this monster trough off the CA coast! That will bring St. Patty's Day snows to the mountains above 2000' outside of LA this weekend!

Friday's high will be just a few degrees cooler than today's maxes...take a look!

And there will talk of some rainfall over the next couple of days.  To be sure, the skies will not be as pristine as the last couple of days, but minimal precip looks to be in store for us over the next 2.5 days...

I've seen numerous global warming stories and talk of said topic the last couple of days...but to set the fact straight, as of this weekend, the global temperatures are actually BELOW NORMAL in spite of the record heat in the eastern USA!

Enjoy your March Madness on the hardwoods and I'll enjoy my Meteorological version of March Madness!

Smitty

AA:  Warm...and most dry through the weekend and into next week!

Mild March Madness

While most people are studying bracketology, I myself am looking at the upper air pattern through the remainder of the most.  And the general trend is warm in the east, cold in the west and in AK through the month of March...not to be confused with May...although we will have temps more in line with may than with March.  That is not the case in AK where their winter for the record books continues well past the equinox...if we believe the numerical modeling.  Also, CA and the west coast will be getting slammed with major storms over the next 2 weeks creating headlines for severe weather in that part of the country (mudslides, mountain snows, etc...).  As for PA, the GFS which is in quite good agreement amongst its ensemble members paints a rather beefy trough over the eastern US.  Take a look....

That in turn will support much above normal temps during this pattern.  Normal maxes at this time of year are around 50ºF for KMDT.  With temps easily +20ºF and likely closer to 25º-30ºF above normal, we will see the mercury touch 80ºF one of the days during this anomalous stretch of weather!

Enjoy your March Madness with May-like temperatures!

Smitty

AA:  Looking quite mild into the foreseeable future!  Here is the "warmest" map I could find over the next 7 days....it is for Thursday....

Springing Forward Into Springtime Warmth

Today we spring forward, not just to Daylight Savings Time, but into a stretch of weather that will be more reminiscent of May as opposed to March!  Saturday we only reached a high temp of 43ºF (-5ºF from normal for march 10!) in spite of bright sunshine.  The air mass that invaded PA over the last 2 days was most certainly of an Arctic origin as dew points were in the single digits for most of yesterday.  The pristine air mass made for excellent viewing last evening of the celestial pairing of Venus and Jupiter, the fiery orangish Mars, the Winter Triangle along with the constellations of the the Winter Hexagon.  It was quite the sky watchers evening!  Here was a snapshot of the clear skies as seen from a high res visible satellite as of late afternoon Saturday.  Note the instability clouds that form out over the ocean as the cold continental air pours out over the much warmer and more humid air from the Gulf Stream warmed ocean at our latitude and off the Delmarva.

However, once we widen our view from topside, we see our next wx maker for Monday into Tuesday.  This is a vast area of disturbed wx down in TX.  The much welcomed rains in the Arklotex region will be moving towards us Monday afternoon and rain will be falling here sometime around nightfall....which is now around 8 pm EDT or so!

Not too much rain will be falling here in the east as the moisture will have a tough time making inroads to the dry air that is in place from the weekend.  I believe less than 0.25" will be in rain gauges by Tuesday when the skies begin to clear out on a westerly flow over PA. Here is a snapshot of the NAM's depiction as to the heaviest rain in a 3 hour period ending around 11 pm Monday night.

 This is a far cry from the rainfall totals the deep south will be receiving this week along with the west coast.  Here is a map showing the total precip that is expected to fall across the entire US by next weekend.  Look at those places in particular!  I circled the areas in white.  The Mississippi and Ohio Valleys clearly show the path of the moisture moving out of TX this week whereas the Pacific NW gets inundated by the trough that is setting up off the west coast this week.  Trough in the west; ridge will develop here in the east!

Take a look at the 500 mb pattern for later this week...a large area of high pressure at all levels will become established here over the eastern half of the country.  If this were summer, we'd be looking at a bona fide heat wave without the risk of any rainfall.  This is a classic heat signature atmospherically.  A synoptic pattern with heights near 580 mb over PA is relatively rare for this time of year!  But that is one deep and vigorous trough off of CA!

This pattern will lead to max temperatures approaching 80ºF for much of the Mid-Atlantic, including PA, by late this week and into the weekend.  The map that is shown below would make people celebrating Memorial Day weekend quite happy let alone St. Patty's Day!  There's not too much green on there; lots of red like some people's skin will be after this week!  The sun angle is approaching 50º in the midday period, plenty high to affect exposed skin that has been hidden all winter!  The melanin will be mobilized as the sun's UV-B starts to make some serious inroads with the ever increasing sun angle! 

And it appears that the week after will continue to be much above normal as both the GFS and the Euro suggest the pattern to feature more ridging in the east!  Both models have the 576 mb heights to the north of PA 10 days from now!  Unreal!

In fact, when we go out to 384 hours (taking us to the last week of March), the GFS still has some semblance of high heights not only here in the east but over most of the continental US!  March looks like it could average closer to early May means as opposed to its "normal" 30 year climatological temperature of March means!  And a zonal flow as shown below is not a severe weather signature by any stretch of the imagination...and that is a good thing!  Meteo's version of March Madness!

Speaking of the severe wx, take a look at the GOES imagery of the severe wx that so very adversely affected the Ohio Valley the 1st couple of day of March.  From the Goddard Space Multimedia site, this is a quick 1.5 minute video and a 30 second video that clearly shows the incredible storms as they marched across the region.  Click on the links below to view this impressive footage!

GOES Sees Tornadoes

Severe Weather Outbreak Satellite Imagery

Enjoy your Sunday...where max temps will begin their climb to above normal and stay there for the remainder of the month!?!  Spring Fever abounds!  Fantasy baseball drafts, MLB preseason games, before you know it, it will be truly spring!  And remember to get out and view the evening skies this week and note the planetary pairing in the western evening sky.  Although it will be overcast for the diagram seen below for us in Harrisburg...the planets will be close all week!

Smitty

AA:  Temps to go above normal for the foreseeable future!  A skiff of rain for Monday night into Tuesday morning.  Prepping to have the best auction draft for fantasy baseball!