This has been so typical this year. A very large, and broad, low pressure system centered over the Northeast US or SE Canada area, but dominating the weather for the entire eastern 1/2 of North America. Cold air moving southward deep into the south will again allow for more snow in the deep south this weekend. The good thing is that the snowpack over much of areas east of the MO river has gone away. This is making the cold air tolerable *and* when the cold advection isn't all that bad and we have some sun, we can warm up to near freezing.

The Atlantic Oscillation

I don't think the Atlantic Oscillation is being handled very well as of late. the top image is the observation of how the AO is doing -- clearly in the "negative phase" while all the forecasts had been showing it would be in the "positive phase".. For more info, http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao.shtml

Musings

I haven't written in a while. Winter is not my favorite season. I find it terribly uneventful. For those that don't know, I just despise snow. Currently, after a warm end of last week, we have no snow cover at all. We have benefited greatly from this as a very cold air-mass has settled in place over most of the US. If we had snow pack, it would be BRUTAL. Instead, we got into the 20's. Nothing balmy, but tolerable. It doesn't appear we have much shot at anything big for quite some time and as days get longer and longer, we might just be able to get a few 40 degree days by mid month *if* we can avoid any snow. Simple sun and high pressure can give us fairly mild temps this time of the year if there is no snow pack. While our normal high will dip for 3 more weeks, to around 28F, any given day can warm up nicely with sun and no snow on the ground. Our latitude really allows us to stay fairly warm and the reason our normal temps (average temps) is far below 40 is b/c this time of the year, more often than not, we have snow pack.

Snow is evil!!! :)