Back in business... soon?

I've been away from the site for quite some time, aside from periodic posts of GFS fantasy storms. As it is, Keene saw its first flakes back in October, but has yet to see accumulating snows. Neither has much of northern New England for that matter. You in fact have to head south to find numbers up on the seasonal snowfall scoreboard. The couple of October events delivered a few inches to parts of Massachusetts and even Connecticut.

Now we are about to enter the time of year when climatology is a little more friendly to snow-lovers. Meteorological winter begins on Tuesday!

But when will true wintry weather actually make an appearance? Chillier temperatures are in the near future. With a frontal passage on Monday, the middle of the week should feature temperatures closer to the seasonal normals; in the low 40's during the day and the mid 20's at night.

However, the prospect of snow is still bleak. In the short term, a strong piece of energy in the southwest will eject east into Texas on Wednesday with surface cyclogenesis on the Gulf Coast. This low is expected to move north into the Ohio Valley on Thursday, spreading moderate to heavy precipitation into the region. While the track is of course uncertain, the expected senario is for New England to be in the warm sector, keeping precipitation in the form of rain and this storm out of the winter weather discussion.

Further out, there are a number of factors pointing toward a period of below normal temperatures in the east. In the Pacific, the MJO wave has remained strong into octant 6, with convection now approaching the dateline where SST anomalies are spiking above 2C. The ramification of this MJO wave is forcing a trough over the Aleutians and strong ridging over Alaska, which is in agreement with current model guidance. In addition, GFS ensembles are indicating a negative NAO developing and persisting through the next couple weeks. So we have the basic recipe for cold, and snow potential. Target time right now is between the 8th and 14th for some sort of wintry event.