Good Monday and Happy Halloween! Mother Nature is dressing as scattered showers and thunderstorms out there today as low pressure spins through the region. Once this passes through, the focus is on a very intriguing setup that features a transition from fall warmth to winter.
Let’s start this Halloween Party out with the spooky weather of today.
Scattered showers and thunderstorms will continue to spin through the state with the greatest concentration in central and eastern Kentucky. Folks, this is not all day rain by any means, but some drops may put a damper on Halloween festivities and some trick or treating.
As usual, I have you all set to track today’s rain…
A lighter system works through here for the middle of the week with only some very light showers. Rain amounts look pretty wimpy…
The system for the weekend continues to show up but has all kinds of timing issues on the models. This can bring a round of showers and storms in here at some point, likely for the second half of the weekend…
The longer range pattern from the weekend into next week continues to fascinate me as it’s a very complicated one. We’ve still got the stubborn system forecast to develop near Florida and the Caribbean that blocks the overall pattern up across North America. At the same time, a major “thumb” ridge goes upa cross Alaska and into northwestern Canada. This sets up a battle of the extremes with the EURO now suggesting that thumb ridge wins early next week.
Watch how it bullies a trough into the eastern half of the country and tries to pick up that Bahamas system…
With that ridge in Alaska, it sends much colder than normal air southward and into the United States…
One of the interesting things I’ve noticed this fall is that the coldest air relative to normal in the Northern Hemisphere has been on our side of the North Pole. Obviously, that makes it easier for patterns to turn colder than normal and that’s something we’ve seen around here since September. Remember the frosty mornings at the end of September? Record snowflakes and temps in October? All of that is because these troughs digging in have access to some real deal cold coming from the north.
Look at where the coldest air relative to normal is next week on the EURO…
If that continues into winter, look out.
While on the subject of winter, the winter forecast comes out on WKYT-TV November 17th. As soon as it hits the air there, you will have it here.
I’ve already thrown out a lot of ideas on where I think the winter is headed and I’m actually happy with most of my analogs as they have behaved pretty well this fall. It’s also interesting to note that every single one of my primary analogs featured a string of days in the 70s in the first 10 days of November. There’s a real chance we see that over the next week or so.
I will have another update later today, so check back. I leave you with this little number to get you through the day…
Make it a safe and Happy Halloween. Take care.
Thank goodness we got at least some decent rains… almost 1/2 inch here… Not enough…but at least it wet some things down….it was SO DRY….
CHRIS – I remember when you used to make a blog post with your winter forecast…
Oh he still makes a blog post to go with the video from his live forecast on WKYT. Normally he gets a whole segment to walk through it with in great detail starting at 4pm. It’s longer than the normal weather/sports 50/50 segments he gets.
But his post that night when his video comes out has more detail in it along with a link to the video.
Mark, I just go to WKYT live news to watch Chris’s weather.
Here in the Bowling Green area, we ended up with 0.55″ of badly needed rain, but we’re still WAY below normal.
Chris’s observation regarding the coldest air being on our side of the North Pole makes perfect sense. It’s tied into that pool of much warmer than normal ocean water in the North Pacific, fueling a ridge that’s pushing the Polar jet stream much farther to the north of Alaska than normal. Here’s a link to the most recent Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly chart, which clearly shows that warm patch, and it also shows the much cooler than normal water off the coast of South America that drives La Niña is more firmly established than ever!
https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/Products/ocean/sst/anomaly/
One more observation…
In addition to this being the most colorful Fall in at least a decade around here, I’ve noticed that the leaves have turned and are dropping much faster than normal. My two largest trees, a silver maple and a sweet gum, usually don’t finish dropping leaves until the beginning of December, but I estimate that leaf drop for both trees is more than 80% complete. Could it be another portent to the severity of the upcoming Winter? Maybe so!
The Polar Low ( Polar Vortex ) is currently very strong and would have to weaken, and when that happens the Arctic Air would flood the Eastern half of the country. NOAA says that’s not likely to happen during La Nina events, but not to write that action off altogether. Sudden Stratospheric Warming ( SSW ) could cause a change and override La Nina’s effects. A very rare occurrence though.
We received 0.41 inches of rain yesterday. A lot of yesterday was rain free due to a dry slot. Most of the rain was in and around the Mississippi River on west. Like the last event.
I’m hoping for a mild and very wet Winter in other words a typical La Nina Winter for the Ohio Valley, but I don’t like the increase in Tornadoes that comes along with it.