1/19/25 Monday 3 am
It was not my intention to go so long without posting. It’s been a rough week. I need to come to terms with the fact that I cannot plan on anything in the future, or schedule anything. My life is only predictable about 4 hours into the future on any given day if I am lucky.
Enough of that, I will figure it out. Based on some of the emails I am getting, people have not been watching the national weather. If you haven’t been following it, the warm, dry weather we have been experiencing is affecting only about a third of the US.
Snow in Alabama yesterday, snow in Florida yesterday. Moderate snow in Georgia. This is the second winter in a row that snow has fallen in these areas. Before last winter it had been in the mid-1950s since this happened in Florida .
Models show a big snow and ice event next weekend evolving out of the remnants of a storm that may (or may not) affect us by later this week. The likely track would be across New Mexico, into Northern Texas, and across the Gulf States, then up the east coast (again).
I am going to be very cautious with this one for our area, because at this point, I see a lot that can go wrong with this storm. It is already showing telltale signs that it could miss us. However, if everything goes right, it would likely have its biggest impacts across the southern portions of the forecast area.
Here is where the country is at as of now.
Let’s continue with “the big picture” for now and look at the whole country.
Tuesday night
Thursday Morning
Friday Morning- Closed low now on shore, trying to tap moisture. Arctic air expands
Regional view Friday morning through Sunday morning.
Friday morning state view
High pressure finally drives out the warmer air on the west slope. Notice how moisture starved the storm is at the point
If this verified it would deposit 5 to 15 inches of fluffy snow across the forecast area. Obviously, things will change between now and next weekend.
As I said a lot can go wrong between now and then. Be diligent, stay tuned, don’t panic, don’t bet the farm on it. I will be tracking it.
I haven’t put together the MJO part 2 post yet. However, things are happening.
Here is the European models forecast. Notice the MJO is finally active, out of the circle of weather death, and up in phase 6.
The numbers on the dotted line correspond to the date, The black line is the past, the redline is current. Notice the “20” on the red line? That is where the MJO is tomorrow. It then shoots through phase 7 (which is good, phase 7 is not favorable for us). Then into phase 8.
We have not been in phase 8 since the last time we had snow. All you need to know is phase 8, 1, and 2 are where we want to be if we want cold and snow.
Here is what it looks like when we hit phase 8 on Saturday.
As we go into these phases “favorable” is the key word. Phases 8,1 and 2, are favorable for winter weather here, but it does not guarantee it.
At some point, I will be able to get into the phases in more detail, but I wanted to show you briefly how it works since I have been talking about it for so long.