Arctic Outbreak Mid January for the Plains?

[Kelly Sugden]

Been watching the models recently and noticing a trend of 500 hPa heights building over Alaska and very cold air surging down from northern Canada into the central United States. Last night both 00Z GFS and 00Z ECMWF were on this. The 12Z GFS backed off a little bit but still shows a very strong surface high around 1045 hPa sliding down the lee of the Rockies. Mid January could be very interesting across the Plains.

 

[Trey Thee]

Yeah, I noticed some interesting trends in the models...next weekend it is going to be cold and by late Sunday into Monday, maybe some wintery precip...

 

[Chris Carter]

Mid Jan is just going to be awful if this pans out, not only will we have a lackluster snowpack but bitterly cold temps. My worst kind of weather. Thankfully the Feb thaw will come after that and we can kick off severe weather season.

 

[jshields]

Mid Jan is just going to be awful if this pans out, not only will we have a lackluster snowpack but bitterly cold temps. My worst kind of weather. Thankfully the Feb thaw will come after that and we can kick off severe weather season.

i don't want to jinx anything chris, but the gfs and the canadian have been showing quite a bit of snow next sunday and monday in our area. the wfo's are already talking about it and tonights gfs actually shows over 1.5" of qpf coming down during a long duration 48-60 hour event. of course this actually will only make the airmass even colder but i'm with you, i hate the cold, but to me its more bearable when there is snow on the ground. not bc its any warmer obviously, but bc i like snow!

 

[Tim Vasquez]

Interestingly last night's GFS run pegged Oklahoma City with a morning low of -23F on the 17th, rising to 5F during the day. The 12Z run backed off on that, obviously, and that's waaaay out, but holy smokes.

So many things still up the air right now, and the models haven't really figured out how and where the arctic air generation will take place, but the loaded gun for an arctic outbreak is definitely there: warm advection into the Chukchi or Beaufort Seas, strong baroclinicity in that area, fresh snow cover, and the establishment of a mid-level cutoff high. Looks like at the very least it ought to be a cold week.

Tim

 

[Danny Neal]

I am not sure I have ever seen the GFS predict such an aggressive Arctic outbreak, even this far out. I can't imagine highs in the Chicago area barely getting above -15!

 

[Jacob Ferden]

I am not sure I have ever seen the GFS predict such an aggressive Arctic outbreak, even this far out. I can't imagine highs in the Chicago area barely getting above -15!

It would be extremely unusual. I spent my first 18 years in southern Minnesota, and can only recall a couple instances up there where the daytime high was below -10, let alone -15.

 

[Tim Vasquez]

I noticed Fort Worth WSFO has a forecaster on shift signed as "TR.92" who is putting 110% into analyzing the arctic outbreak and has been referencing climatology and various manual forecast techniques. His/her opinion is that the models are overdoing things.
http://www.weather.gov/view/prodsByState.php?state=tx&prodtype=discussion
(scroll down to the morning FWD discussion).

Looking forward to what's written tomorrow. I wonder if there's other discussions out there right now with this level of insight.

Tim

 

[Jim Zandonai]

I have been peeking at the GFS for last couple weeks and it has shown extremely cold air in NW Canada where it usually is this time of year trying to slip into the U.S but as usual is modified greatly by the time it gets here. Typically this is our coldest time of year anyway and usually I don't get too worried unless I see -15 or more temps forecasted here. Temps usually do not get that cold unless we have substantial snow cover here. Right now we have zero cover. In the late 70s we typically had many nights -20 but had 1-2ft plus of snow on the ground like in '79 for instance. Like the discussion suggested I would expect an extended period of fairly cold rather then record cold here at least unless we get a signifcant snow in the meantime and get blasted in the next couple /few weeks.

 

[Keith Wilson]

The discussion for our area calls the forecast for the end of next week to be "challenging", but shaping up to be the coldest air mass of the year as the potentially 1055 to 1065 mb ridge plunges through the Plains deep into the Southeast.

 

[Mark Blue]

I recall a couple of periods of bitterly cold weather since we moved to Denver in the fall of 1988. There was one episode in February of 1989 where it was so cold folks were having a terrible time even getting their cars started to get to work. This one sticks out in my memory because my wife's birthday is February 3rd. Denver NWS wrote a good recap of the event here: Feb 1-6, 1989 (scroll down).

Another episode I recall was in December the following year in 1990. I had to have surgery a few days before Christmas that year and I they had me scheduled to arrive at the hospital at 6 am that morning. It was so cold you could feel it all the way to your core. Here's the write up for that one by the Denver NWS: Dec 19-23, 1990 (scroll down).

It seems there is going to be some sort of cold snap that will occur, the only question yet to be answered is how severe will it be. Bitterly cold weather is my least favorite type of weather, but it seems we are overdue at this point.

 

[Tim Vasquez]

Right now the northwest Pacific is highly baroclinic due to long wave troughing and the exit of Siberian air over the warm Pacific waters. As a result it will be unusually stormy off the Kamchatka coast up through the Aleutians (bad for the crab fishers), and this is the thing that's going to bring a slug of warm air up across Alaska and produce the long awaited cutoff high. This is where things get fuzzy, but the GFS seems lately to be going stronger with this cutoff high -- enough to throw Siberian air into the mix by setting up a broad, intense channel across the Arctic Ocean from Siberia (Sakha region, I hate the generic "Siberia" term since the place is so huge) across the polar icepack southward through Canada on the 12th-16th. The ECMWF, and to a lesser extent, the GEM, seem to like this idea too. This is a detail that will have to be watched since it would compound the prospects for a cold wave late next week.

Of course this post is bookended with the obligatory "if"s and "maybe"s... that's 200 hours out, but the large-scale stuff like this should start ironing itself out by the weekend.

That said, I wish more weather websites did a better job with the polar regions... most of them cut off anything north of the Canadian high arctic and make it really difficult to keep track of these developments. I don't even know of any model sites that cover Siberia in general without that awful mercator projection, which I guess might be useful in case a typhoon wanders up that way.

Tim

 

[jshields]

i don't want to jinx anything chris, but the gfs and the canadian have been showing quite a bit of snow next sunday and monday in our area. the wfo's are already talking about it and tonights gfs actually shows over 1.5" of qpf coming down during a long duration 48-60 hour event. of course this actually will only make the airmass even colder but i'm with you, i hate the cold, but to me its more bearable when there is snow on the ground. not bc its any warmer obviously, but bc i like snow!

it looks like i did jinx it forecast models now hold onto an upper low over canada north of the great lakes that looks to push the storm to the west of us. the local mets here were saying if we get the snowpack we wouldn't get above zero during the day and down around 20 below at night, so maybe it's a good thing it doesn't look like snow now.

 

[Jim Zandonai]

Thats exactly right..the effect of significant snow cover allows more radiational cooling at night which makes it much easier to reach the -20 area and allows less heating in the daytime by reflecting sunlight. I remember many frigid Winters here in the 80s and 90s where lows were -20 with wind chills -40 or so..but if memory serves the snow cover was rather extensive in Mid Jan. So for me - here's hoping for no signifcant snowfall here in the next 2 weeks as now we have bare ground.

 

[Jeff Duda]

but shaping up to be the coldest air mass of the year as the potentially 1055 to 1065 mb ridge plunges through the Plains deep into the Southeast.

That would be insanely high MSLP. The highest I've ever seen it was in Jan 2009 when it hit around 1050 when places in Iowa (don't remember the rest of the nation) were hitting -30...smashing a record for the date. I can only imagine the density/coldness of air that would result in MSLPs of 1055 to 1065 mb.