Good Saturday to one and all. Our Easter Weekend is underway and the forecast could still use a little bit of work out there today. I’m going to use this post to look at the normal short-term outlook and to look much farther down the road.
Temps today are in the upper 50s and low 60s for the north and west. That’s where skies will try to lighten up a bit.
Clouds will linger across the south and southeast, keeping temps held way down once again. I still can’t rule out a shower across the southeast…
Easter Sunday starts in the 30s and ends in the 60s with a mostly sunny sky. That nice weather will lock in for a while into next week. The overall pattern looks pretty calm for a while and that’s expected with a 500mb pattern that looks more like September than April.
Check out the ballooning ridge of high pressure over the northern part of the country with low pressure across the Gulf of Mexico…
That system may turn into something tropical or semi-tropical before lifting out. That has a chance to bring us a shower or storm later next week.
It’s also a pattern bringing above normal temps…
Let’s look much deeper into the year with the Canadian SIPS. This is a seasonal model that runs at the start of each month. The model is showing a rather tame summer taking shape for much of the country…
It also has our region a little drier than normal…
What about the fall that follows? The seasonal run as the 3 month temp average near normal…
The model shows what has been the ongoing trend of the past few decades… A wet fall…
This seasonal model rarely has anything but a warm winter for our region and most of the country. That’s not the case with the current run…
It’s also showing what looks like an active southern storm track…
Make it a great Saturday and take care.
The future cast weather probably means many long dry spells this summer.
As for winter it will probably be colder than the past one.
Likely to have more opportunities to see festive flakes in the sky.
If the strong Southeast Ridge prevails this Summer it could very well be a hot, dry Summer. This happened before from 1987 to 1990. I remember this as it was a real chore keeping my nursery plants alive. When Fall and Winter came on the drought continued with mild temperatures.
Those Snowy days of Winter that I remember probably won’t return in my lifetime unless we have the changes in the Pacific to the positive. Looks right now we are going to hang on to ENSO / neutral for quite sometime.
Here is the link for the summary of the multiple rounds of severe thunderstorms that moved through Northern IL and portions of the Chicago Metro Area this past Tuesday through Wednesday morning. The Tuesday morning and early afternoon storms were prolific hail producers, with ping-pong and tennis-ball size hail affecting some areas (the photos are really amazing).
https://weather.gov/lot/2023_04_04_SevereStorms
Not a drop of rain is in the forecast for the next week in the Chicago area, which will be a nice break from the severe weather of the last two weeks.
The worst Hailstorm I ever experience in was in March 1960. School was in secession when the skies turned a dark eire green shade. Wind came up an rain and large Hail begin falling and accumulated to about 4 inches. Lots of cars were destroyed in the school’s parking lot. This followed a major heavy Snowstorm at the beginning of March. Snowed almost two feet. Thanks for sharing Mike. I’ve never seen hail stones larger than three inches.
The big snows of the past,I miss them.
Wow Mike that’s some big hail.