Dec 30 2012

Another East Coast Snowstorm After New Years Day? Main Focus (North Carolina)

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About the author

Matthew

Hey my name is Matthew Hatley. I am 16 and I always loved the weather ever since I was a baby. I used to stand at the door and watch the lightning during thunderstorms. I was a little chap when I used to do that. I am a meterologist for mainly the southeast but occasinally I do forecasts for the whole country. I do my best to give information about the weather to people who ask me what the weather will be like for the day, or the week. My favorite time of the year is winter. I do the best weather forecasting during the winter. I enjoy all of the people who view my forecast, but not only mine but all the other forecasters at Weatheradvance.com

68 comments

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Dexter

January 3, 2013 at 12:46 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment

Yes just because we have a Strat warming event going on does NOT mean the US will get cold. As Rick has mentioned last year Europe got the cold becuase of the NAO. Also for those of you talking about the NAO,AO, and PNA they are big players in winter so you better keep an eye on them because thay mean a lot when it comes to winter weather or not. I think the key timing on any cold weather coming into the US will be around the 20th. Just look at December and how that panned out. Was very mild for most of the country. We will see how things progress but you have to look at the big picture also.
Eric

January 3, 2013 at 7:27 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment

@ Rick
The stratospheric warming event we are seeing this year is significantly stronger than it was last year, not very often you see the polar vortex completely collapse in the stratosphere. What you don’t seem to understand though is that the NAO and AO are NOT gospel here, and these oscillations are responding to the larger conditions at hand. The stratospheric warming event over the arctic is loading cold air, and as it does so, this increase in cold air forces a stronger temperature and pressure gradient between the mid-latitudes, thus the vortex in this instance over northern Canada will tighten up. However, another warming event will begin over eastern North America and move over top of this vortex, and this will probably lead to its demise as well. Over time, as the cold air remains in place, the cold air naturally sinks, thus pressures are forced to rise in response to this. Higher pressures over the arctic is a signal for a -AO and -NAO, so these oscillations will go negative (and could do so quite strongly) in response to the warming event. Also, we have another Kelvin Wave coming, the latest SOI is a -9.6, and as I’ve discussed in my last post, these Kelvin Waves can preclude stratospheric warming events, in this case, this new Kelvin Wave may make the situation even worse for the polar vortex.
Eric

January 3, 2013 at 4:09 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment

@ Armando and Mike D,
I will try to answer your questions tomorrow evening, been busy today.
armando

January 3, 2013 at 10:03 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment

It’s fine Eric we understand you’re busy with many things and really appreciate your time for us! Anyway basically what I want to say is that all of these teleconnections are actually coming into place in the long range(late mid jan and beyond), and things are looking up! I was watching Joe B video’s, and their has been growing confidence about this upcoming pattern with the warm, and then right after cold air invades. So what I want to know is that will mainly next week be warm then it’s gone by next weekend or it lasts into early the following week? I’m guessing cold air will eventually push through and make it to the east by like the 16th which makes sense. So with all of these teleconnections coming together does that mean good news for snowlovers? I’ve been reading about this storm somewhere near the 14th, but isn’t that going to be in the same timeframe as the warm air? my opinion on that is it will be a interior northeast/great lakes cutter and bring a nice rainstorm(boo) to the whole east, BUT it will change the pattern right? Well it’s an interesting pattern coming up, but I have GREAT confidence with the rest of winter!
Maranda

January 4, 2013 at 9:32 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment

I sure hope Eastern NC (Jacksonville) gets some snow this winter. My daughter’s dying to build a snowman lol
Cassie

January 4, 2013 at 11:09 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment

Well our weather man says next Thursday is going to be 64. That’s as far as it went. It was NICE AND COLD last night in the 20′s. Wish some precip had been in the forecast. I am in the foothills outside of blowing rock closer to Lenoir. Blowing Rock has had snow this year not sure of the inches but I am sure it is probably more than they got last year. Nothing here yet but the persimmon tree that I use had spoons this year and some big ones at that. But it also had spoons last year. Seniors around here plan alot of there winters around those seeds. We still have about 14 weeks of winter by the calendar, but that really does not mean anything, it was spring in feb last year and I already have easter lilys coming up as we speak.

Waiting on snow like everyone else. Been following you guys for months and enjoy your site.
AutoFill Rob

January 4, 2013 at 8:52 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment

Sum meteorologist say the cold & snow is coming but then say the mjo is going to prevent it from getting to cold here in the east…then some say its not cause the strat warming is going to overtake that…ughhh…that’s what gets me confused n frustrated… they give you hope then at the same time saying this “may” not happen…whatever… if it snows and its cold I’ll know it happened… if not,get ready for spring..
Eric

January 4, 2013 at 9:35 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment

@ Armando
Yeah, I also have very strong confidence that by late January and through February this pattern will be cold and snowy, of course, I think it is certainly a possibility that the cold in late winter rivals January 1985 (perhaps even colder as I’ll explain below). You’re right the cold air will begin to push back after Jan 15th, and this warm-up as I’ve been saying for quite some time now, will not be nowhere near as strong nor as long lasting as the most previous warm pattern that we observed in early December. That storm coming on the 14th certainly looks like it is going to be farther to the west, and snows associated with it look like they will be focused towards the Great Lakes and interior northeast, and snow will even extend southwestward all the way down into western Oklahoma and western Texas, with snow extending into the south-central Rockies. It is amazing though that we could have a winter storm during the warmest part of the pattern, attests to how cold this pattern is that we have in place. The conditions, which I started to explain all the way back on December 9th still hold validity (even when people tried to criticize my ideas saying that “it looks like last year” or “it is a check that can not be cashed”), and the biggest parts of this pattern that is setting everything into motion is the 30 day sunspot cycles and the Kelvin Waves over the equatorial Pacific, which is associated with the MJO, ENSO, and the SOI. This makes sense given that the sun is the main source of earth’s energy, and with the 30 day sunspot cycles low http://www.solen.info/solar/, this lower amount of activity should naturally make the pattern cooler for the eastern US in particular (which was also observed over the course of the fall with several sunspot cycles found to have correlations with temperature) and interestingly, with the sunspot cycles low since early December, it is no wonder why the pattern cooled off considerably over the course of December, and stayed cool. Now, with the Kelvin Wave that was produced over the Pacific in early-mid December, this easterly moving wave across the Pacific forces vast amounts of energy to be produced, and since there is no way for this energy to be relieved into the ground, the majority of the heat energy produced by this large scale wave is sent upwards into higher levels of the atmosphere towards the upper troposphere and stratosphere. From here, this increased heat energy propagating upwards through the troposphere and stratosphere cools off as it gains altitude, and eventually gets to a point where it cools off enough, and spreads out in all directions. Now, with a completely different pressure set-up over the stratosphere and upper troposphere as opposed to the lower troposphere, this forces the movement of air at these levels to go in the opposite direction. The eastwardly moving Kelvin Wave at the surface helps to produce westerly winds (or significantly slowed tropical easterlies), and in response, the winds in the stratosphere above are forced to go in the opposite direction, in this case from east to west. Now, when you extrapolate this wind flow over the stratosphere across the entire globe, you get winds that go in a clockwise motion, (indicative of high pressure), and with the polar vortex over the arctic essentially being a strong region of low pressure in the stratosphere that rotates in a counter-clockwise motion, the opposing winds being forced by the Kelvin Wave help to slow or even reverse the wind flow over the stratosphere. With a decreased amount of air flowing into the polar vortex thanks to a slowing or reversal of the winds, the stratosphere begins to warm, and if the warming event is strong enough (like it is this year) then the vortex can completely collapse. This collapsing of the vortex not only helps to release lots of cold air residing in the higher levels of the atmosphere, but also helps to promote large releases of arctic air into the mid-latitudes (-AO). Seeing as how my predictions for a stratospheric warming event verified, it certainly looks like with the potential collapse of the vortex occurring as Andrew at Weathercentre explained, it looks like the pattern could turn quite cold as we get towards late January and February (essentially I have not changed my ideas). The one thing that will likely change with time is the severity of the cold, right now, I’m thinking we could easily see this pattern rival Jan 1985 in its current state, however, I have been noticing a new Kelvin Wave developing over the Pacific, and if this is the case, I could certainly see the possibility of yet another warming event take over the stratosphere, and if this happens then things could turn very wild and we may need to be concerned about the pattern potentially being colder than Jan 1985 (which was a time period in which some of the coldest air of the 20th century moved over the US), but we will have to see how things unfold.
Eric

January 4, 2013 at 9:41 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment

@ Mike D,
I answer some of your questions in my response to Armando, (including about that storm for the 14th or so) but my ideas remained unchanged as I anticipate the pattern to turn cold towards lat Jan-February, and the ECMWF weeklies are most likely suffering from feedback issues as there is a lot going on in this pattern and it is a lot for the model to handle. Those weeklies, interestingly have completely flipped and are now showing a deeply negative AO (mainly in response to the stratospheric warming event) and a considerably cold pattern for late winter, which is why I do not just stare at models, in fact, when I do make my posts and forecasts, models are usually one of the last things I look at, the conditions at hand, and other analog patterns usually have priority over models, at least for me.
AutoFill Rob

January 4, 2013 at 10:07 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment

@ Eric..so you don’t see the mjo having a bearing on the cold for the east coast? Or will it affect it alil?
Eric

January 4, 2013 at 11:47 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment

@ AutoFill Rob
The MJO will only help to delay the period of cold that is going to be coming towards late January, if it wasn’t in the warm octants 4,5, and 6, like it is now, it would turn cold a little sooner. Regardless, the MJO alone is not going to be enough to stop the cold from coming late Jan-Feb, because once we get towards the end of January, the MJO should be moving out of the western Pacific and heading towards the Atlantic, in which the MJO will eventually offer even more support for cold than what we are already seeing at hand. I also suspect that the MJO is helping to trigger this current Kelvin Wave (indicated by recent drops in the Southern Oscillation Index), and just like the last one, this Kelvin Wave will help to drive the Eastern Pacific Oscillation negative, which favors large scale troughing near and just east of Hawaii. The effects of the EPO behave a lot like the NAO, in which the negative state of the EPO favors cold over the eastern US, the positive state favors warmth and a trough near the gulf of Alaska, which pumps the Pacific jet to the south and west and blasts warm air into the US (which is what happened last year with a strong Alaskan Vortex). Now, the negative phase of the EPO forces troughing near and south of the Hudson Bay near the eastern US, and a large ridge to form over NW Canada and Alaska. Unlike the NAO, the EPO is a much better indicator of the pattern than the NAO, and the reason is the positive and negative phases have the same effects on weather in the US, and the fact that this a tropical oscillation. This is important because as I have said many times before, and I will say it again, as temperature increases, the amount of energy in between per degree increment is greater than that of cold temperatures. Means you could have a change of temperature one degree at 80 have the same amount of change in energy exchange as a change in temperature of 20-25 degrees at temperatures well below zero. Combine this with the oceans having 1000x times the energy capacity of the atmosphere, this makes the difference in energy exchange over water amplified, and this is why the tropics dictate the pattern with factors like ENSO, Kelvin Waves, tropical cyclones, MJO, SOI, and EPO, and the more well known mid-high latitude oscillations like PNA, AO, and NAO are only indicators not dictators in a pattern, because they can dramatically change and respond to even the slightest changes in the tropics. This is a good reason why I don’t like to focus so much on these oscillations like other forecasters. As I’ve already explained in a previous post, the Kelvin Wave during early-mid December helped to trigger this stratospheric warming event, which already looks like it may force the polar vortex to completely collapse. To make matters worse, ANOTHER Kelvin Wave has already begun to form, and knowing the kind of damage on Kelvin Wave has done to the Polar vortex, could only imagine what another one could do, and this is why I am leaving open the possibility for a pattern like Jan 1985 with it not out of the realm of possibility for the pattern to be even colder than that pattern, but we’ll have to see about that.
armando

January 5, 2013 at 12:24 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment

I’m really starting to understand the whole weather world and learned so many concepts about weather! So when this pattern finally happens the question would be how long would it last? Could this pattern until March? Also Eric do you think the east could start seeing snowstorms around 20th and beyond? Thanks Eric really appreciate it!
AutoFill Rob

January 5, 2013 at 1:00 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment

@ Eric…Ook…I’ve learned alot from you e..thanks for all your hard work and answering my questions.. that’s cool…well I hope this upcoming pattern really brings it! It should be reeeally interesting around the east AND country as a whole towards the end of the month..
Derickeugeneree

January 5, 2013 at 8:41 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment

Eric will the storm on the 14th give my area snow?
Eric

January 5, 2013 at 10:25 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment

@ Armando
That is a really good question, but usually under stratospheric warming events the cold pattern usually likes to stick around for 4-6 weeks, so we’re at least going to be dealing with this until late February, but I think it could easily last into March, but there remains some uncertainty with this.
Eric

January 5, 2013 at 10:30 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment

@ AutoFill Rob, Armando, and Derickeugeneree
The thanks is all mine, I like it when you guys ask questions, helps to keep me going and pushes me to become a better forecaster and really look into things. this storm coming around the 14th or so has the midwest and the Great Lakes written all over it, with some severe weather possible for the southern US. The eastern US will probably stay warmer, however, like we saw in mid-December, this storm is only helping to set up what is to come as the increased snow is put down, this allows for the trailing cold (arctic air) behind the system to refrigerate and even strengthen due to the snow on the ground reflecting 85-90% of solar radiation, allows the surrounding air to be colder than it would without snow.
Tim Johnson

January 5, 2013 at 10:39 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment

So how long before the East U.S can get into the cold? Could it really get cold in the Eastern U.S or will it still be warm?
Eric

January 5, 2013 at 11:13 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment

@ TIm Johnson
I think once we get this system after the 14th, this will help to force a lot of cold air down the plains, eastern Rockies, and Great Lakes, by not only helping to drop a significant amount of snow, but by drawing a whole lot of cold air behind it. This storm system in fact could become entangled with the polar vortex over northern Canada, and may cause the already displaced vortex under the significant stratospheric warming event to come down a little farther to the south. This storm system around the 14th will strengthen as the cold air comes down the Rockies and plains, and with warmer air to the east over the eastern US. The strengthening mid-latitude cyclone then will have a tendency to move more poleward, in doing so, it will get caught under the blocking developing near Greenland, and this block directly to the north of the low pressure area (Rex Blcok) will force the low pressure to slow down, and with the very cold region of low pressure (polar vortex) over northern Canada, this area of low pressure may be close and strong enough to force a fujiwhara of these low pressure areas. In a fujiwhara, regions of low pressure have a tendency to rotate towards one another in a counter-clockwise motion due to the natural flow around a region of low pressure in the northern hemisphere to be in a counter-clockwise motion. In this instance, with the vortex over Northern being in a position to the northwest of this incoming region of low pressure will be forced southward, and since this region of low pressure carries some of the coldest air over the northern hemisphere, with it moving much closer to the US, there is reason to believe that this pattern could turn rather cold over the eastern US after mid-January. Also, with the infusion of this kind of arctic air being enhanced over the healthy snow pack over northern North America, this could create a violent clash in air masses, in which, the residual warmth and mild air (at least relatively speaking) over areas where there is no snow pack comes in close contact with the arctic air being enhanced by a significantly displaced polar vortex. This large difference in temperatures over a short area creates large amounts of instability which feeds mid-latitude cyclones, and creates a tight pressure gradient where the higher pressures over the snow pack rush towards the lower pressures farther to the south and east, and along with the developing block and tanking AO and NAO significantly negative (this is due to the breakdown of the polar vortex thanks to the stratospheric warming event), this will likely set-up an active storm track over the US after the 15th and exactly where this sets up is another question, but I favor it for the southern and eastern US, with some systems in the northern branch affecting the midwest and Great Lakes.