Crazy Cold A Comin'

With this first wintry event ending as y'all awaken this morning, a "Manitoba Mauler", which is gearing up to invoke a smack-down on southern and eastern New England, will give us a cursory accumulation of winter fun, but more importantly, pave the way for the hounds of the arctic to come a howlin' to these parts for the next few weeks!  Please humor me and let me describe all of this...1st the "MM" for Sunday evening...please note that some of the snowfall depicted on the map below is the ending of the current snowfall...which is ending as rain and freezing rain here at my humble abode here in the sub-tropics of south central PA!

So come Monday morning, at KMDT, we are looking at a seasonal snowfall total somewhere in the neighborhood of 15" to date...pretty typical for us at this time of the year.  Everyone was pumped for winter back in November with the pre-Thanksgiving snow (rare for KMDT) and the early cold shots that was getting everyone in the spirits for a "White Christmas".  Let me remind you of the temps from November 2014...

As you can plainly see, with the exception of CA and NV, the remaining parts of the CONUS were very much below seasonal norms for the month.  Dreams of a white Christmas were quickly dashed, however, as December dawned a new month of warmth...take a look...

The only wintry events that can come from a warm anomaly as seen above is solid lake effect snows as the lakes remain "warm" relative to the the occasional cold shots coming across them delivering the winter goods for those in the favored lake effect belts.  However, once the ball dropped on Time Square, the weather turned once again for the lower 48.  This January has a chance to be colder than last January and in fact, currently is as a whole for the lower 48 to date!  But everyone remembers the "Polar Vortex" episodes and the numerous snows that occurred as the warmth attacked the strong holding cold to the north...here...look for yourself...this is January 2014 below...quite cold from Nunavut to New Orleans and points east!

And this January to date as seen below...note the "warm" southeast quadrant of the US around FL and the Carolinas...that is what has caused any precip that has tried to come our way from the southwest to ultimately warm the column and turn it to rain in these parts.  But when we get clipper systems from the northwest, although the moisture is limited, it is accompanied by quite a cold air mass and high ratio snows are usually the outcome.  And that once again is likely to occur to end our week's end.

But when we look at the monthly deviations for January in a week or so, they will look much different from the map above as some serious cold is about to be unleashed on the eastern CONUS.  Here are the temperature anomalies for the next 5 days...

Then days 6-11...

And finally days 11-16...

And as we head into February (remember February made Don McLean shiver with every paper he delivered...sorry I digress...), the cold looks to hold if you believe the NCEP climate models...the map below shows the last 3 runs averaged...that is quite a cold signal for the northeast!

The model is likely sniffing out a deep snow pack as this graphic below indicates...this is a 10 day mean of max snow depth for the 10 days into the middle of February...

OK...I've rambled on long enough.  I think y'all get the point.  This weekend will kickoff winter for the next several weeks in these parts.  "Kickoff"...kinda ironic since we don't have any football this weekend, unless the Senior Bowl counts for something, and it does as it is many times entertaining!  So, the cold is a comin' as is Jimi's train; take a listen. It's acoustic (12-string) for all of you raucous electric guitar phobes.  I hope you enjoy.

And enjoy your week's end!

Smitty

AA:  Snow cover will make the cold that's on tap this week even "colder".  Here, I couldn't resist one more map.  Modeled lows for Wednesday...