Good Thursday to one and all. Here is hoping this blog finds each of you doing well and enjoying life to it’s fullest. The pattern over the next several days will see a continuation of the pleasant weather we have seen for the past week. Temps will be cool today, but will rebound nicely again for the weekend.
Looking beyond the weekend… signs are strongly pointing toward a big change in the overall weather pattern for the second half of November that would carry us into December. These changes point to the possibility of winter coming early around here. Possibility being the key word here. 
Before we look at that… let’s check out the forecast for the next several days…
– Highs today will be back into the mid and upper 50s after we start things out in the low and mis 30s. Winds will be rather gusty once again and a few clouds will still be noted… especially in the east.
– Friday will bring some milder air in here as readings head toward 60 under partly sunny skies.
– A breezy and fairly mild weekend is in store again… especially Saturday as highs warm into the mid 60s for Indian Summer II. Sequels are never as good as the original! 
– A weak front will pass through here Sunday leading to slightly cooler temps into Monday as readings dip into the upper 50s to near 60. It should still be rather breezy and there is a small threat for a shower.
– Early next week will find a slow moving cut off low pressure across the plains states. This will head toward the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley by later Tuesday into Wednesday and bring the chance for showers in here to go along with cooler temps. Here is what the GFS looks like during this time…
Wednesday November 18th
That would lead to a couple of chilly and damp days around here. This appears to be the start of some important overall changes to the pattern across North America. I showed you a chart in my last post about the Arctic Oscillation and how it is forecast to go negative in the coming weeks and what that has done to our weather over the past several months. This change in the AO appears to coincide with changes in the North Atlantic Oscillation(NAO) and the Pacific North American Index (PNA). Check out this graphic to see what I am talking about…
A “positive” phase of the PNA means we send a ridge of high pressure up the west coast of the US. The “Negative” phase of the NAO means we get blocking to show up which helps funnel cold air into the eastern half of the country. You get a -NAO and -AO to team up with a +PNA and you can have some fun and games to start showing up for the eastern part of the country.
It looks like Thanksgiving week will see those changes start showing up as the models have all been pointing toward this week as being the one that can get the ball rolling. The GFS continues to show this…
Wednesday November 25th
Thanksgiving Day
Please do NOT take these maps as the gospel. I am only showing them to show you how the models are now showing changes during this time and how these changes match up with what the indicies suggest should start to happen.
Time will tell as always!
Have a great Thursday and take care.
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-NAO + +PNA =Fun times and lots of forecasting headaches :P. I’ll gladly take some Advil for the headaches if we see some big snow from that set up.
just commented about that a few minutes ago when those three team up fun times are likely ahead and just maybe there will be a slight hesitation in wxman’s winter prediction.
Cool thanksgiving day.
Looking at consistency of trends of the GFS 16 day http://wxweb.meteostar.com/sample/sample.shtml?text=KDVK it does hint at something wintry around thanksgiving but IF and COULD are the keys. The “trend” that I have seen suggest nothing significant yet in the frozen precip arena. Model Thickness levels continue to be too warm until most precip has passed and air temps and ground temps too warm for appreciable accum. At best an inch CoULD accum IF it occurs around Thanksgiving. Here we go with the ever familiar 2-3 week away system. Things do change. Well, thats my 2 cents for this morning.
For those of us who cant get a real grasp on all those maps, I saw a solid black wooly worm today!
Obviously, it is IMPOSSIBLE to know what Winter will be like. All anyone can do is take a good guess. While many predict based 100% on scientific data, I choose to use recent history as well as what I know about Ohio Valley weather from living here for 31 years to make a call. 11 or 12 consecutive months of cold/wet wx would be unprecidented here, that is why if you have to gamble, you should gamble on the side of warmer/drier wx for the Winter. EVERY Winter has SOME cold spells, and this one will be the same.
Obviously, it is IMPOSSIBLE to know what Winter will be like. All anyone can do is take a good guess. While many predict based 100% on scientific data, I choose to also use recent history as well as what I know about Ohio Valley weather from living here for 31 years to make a call. 11 or 12 consecutive months of cold/wet wx would be unprecidented here! That is why if you have to gamble, you should gamble on the side of warmer/drier wx for the Winter. EVERY Winter has SOME cold spells, and this one will be the same.
I couldn’t believe this!
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,574125,00.html?test=latestnews
We need to get some of these scientists over here!
once was enough 😛 enough with the torture j/k
I just read this article. I was taught there is only a certain amount of water in and around the earth. If you make it “wetter” in one area of the world, won’t it make it “drier” in another part of the world? My thought is, “It’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature!”
I don’t know why that went through twice actually. And there is no delete post button on the blog. So OOPS. :p
key for me is pow, a winter 10 degrees below normal with 12” of snow from six different events is lame. i am with wxman ofcourse my gut is a ridiculous way to predict but i just feel overall we are going to be quite mild, hopefully no ice for a winter would be nice.
I’ve seen a lot of them on my farm and they’ve all been red in the middle and the heads and tails are black.
Here is another viewpoint on it from the Web: “Another wrench into this winter will be what the AO, NAO, PNA, and EPO does. Throughout this winter, we’re going to be looking at the majority of the periods where one of the indexes is positive. And with the -PDO/moderate El Nino alignment, that spells trouble for any cold/snow making it into the Northern CONUS.” But I have also seen some forecasts that predict frequent ice storms here due to El Nino keeping the storm track more southerly, allowing for over-running events. It’s all on the table. I think we have one more mild Winter coming up before things turn around for us in the early 2010s.
WITH A GRAIN OF SALT ! and just becuase we’ve been talking about turkey day weather… Accuweather 15 forecast calling for freezingrain/ flurries on Thankgiving day for Barbourville,ky…but again 15 days is 15 days, and right now just making it from one model run to the next is like conquering a huge mountain…
Hey All! My two cents (if that) is…….wait for it…… We get what we get and be happy with that!
We may not be happy with it. But we’ll have to take it, won’t we? 😉
Yes WXman! You in Lawrenceburg and me in Versailles will be doing exacltly that! It is what it is! What will be will be or something in between! LOL!
Yay! 🙂
what part of what Chris said about us not having a Moderate El Nino do you not understand exactly ?
18z gfs has bigtime ridge in east and trough in west, since its 300+ hrs out i like our chances to reverse that.
Well, with all this uncertainty about the weather, here’s a forecast that will
NEVER be wrong:
It might rain today, it might be sunny
It could even snow today (don’t laugh, it’s not funny.)
It might be breezy, we could have an
earthquake,
But you’ll know about that if the ground
begins to shake.
We might see floods, or drought, or blinding fog, or we may even be suffocated with urban smog.
One things for sure, no matter where you are, enjoy your weather, near and far!
Ok, that’s the cutesy poem for today.
Nuff of that. LOL