Favorable pattern

I commented on this in the winter weather section, but Ill say again here, that it is amazing we havent seen any snowfall from such a remarkably cold period in the last week. The past 7 days shattered many records across New England. And then what happened? We get a miller B that decides to run inland resulting in rain. Regardless of that fact, it is still early, and even though much of SNE hasnt seen snow yet (compared to places as far south as North Carolina already seeing their first inch), we are coming up on a very favorable period - possibly just as good as the very snowy December last year.

Why do I think this? The cold that we have had for the past week didnt go anywhere. The storm itself was just not favorable for the region. As low pressure retrogrades back west and the cold front moves offshore, New England will return to a cool regime. It wont be anything like the past week, but we will be around 5 degrees below the normal through Saturday. In any case, an upper level low, reminant of the system today, will retrograde into southern Canada by day 2, and establish itself as a long wave trough over the eastern two thirds of the nation by day four. Pieces of energy rotating around this trough will help amplify it and shift it southward. The latest few Euro runs indicate positive height anomalies pinching off over Greenland by day 10, developing a classic -NAO.



In the short term, another shot at snowfall comes Friday into Friday Night. This system is discussed in the Winter Weather Outlook page. This system will reintroduce notable negative 2m temperature anomalies to the Great Lakes and northeast.

My primary focus in the longer term is on Monday 12/1. Monday shows a lot of potential with low pressure developing in the deep south along a front on Sunday and moving north along the east coast. The GFS is keeping the southern piece of energy dominant and delivers a good blow to the northern Mid Atlantic and interior New England. This has been a rather consistent solution for the past day or so. The ECMWF also shows this storm well, with a northern and southern stream phase around 90W, leading to a major system moving north and retrograding above 40N. Verbatim this displays immediate ptype issues similar to our system today and the October 28th storm (a theme of the winter? I hope not). However, this is in the day 6 range with time for changes.

The 12/1 storm system would be another tool in the process of developing the -NAO block over Greenland. This would establish itself in time for possible snow threats towards the middle of the month. In the mean time, anomalous cold will build over the east again.

Thereafter, I am anticipating a break centered around the 20th while the arctic reloads, and then another shot of cold air and snow potential in time for Christmas.