The Year Without A Winter...Warming Up into February

After some thunderstorms tonight and early Friday, we'll clear out in the Southeast for theWeekend, with a couple of cooler days (but still above normal). Next week we begin a warmup and drying out period. If you're wondering where the cold and snow is, you have to look to Alaska and Siberia. Most of the United States continues to be warm with snowfall well below normal, and we're about to get even warmer entering February.  This turning out to be one of the warmest Winters in a decade, and possibly a top 5 warmest overall for the mainland United States in over 100 years, with no end in sight.  If we get through mid February and still see no signs of Winter or cold air, it will be very unlikely that any cold air coming into the Southeast would be cold enough to produce snow. Instead, late February and March could be cold, and possibly rainy. However anything is possible in March and there are years where even in March parts of the South and east had big cold waves and snow, but that's the exception rather than the rule.  I do think that the longer we go without cold air, the worse the Spring will feel.

Day 10 map, valid Feb 5.  Blues and purple are cold air, greens and yellows warm air.

Speaking of Spring, with all the warmth and wet weather lately, and now the increasing sun angle, look for plants that usually wait to bloom in March, begin their opening up period. Next week could see daffodils, irises, azaleas, bradfords, cherries and other trees opening up way ahead of schedule.  For western NC I've never seen a snowless Winter, but so far nothing is in sight to produce any flakes at all. We'll see if history is made.

Winter Nowhere in Sight For South...More Heavy Rains

The year without a Winter continues (except Alaska). The south will continue to get rain every few days. This next system arrives late Thursday for the Southeast and could drop a couple inches of water, esp. on the mountains where some flooding could be a concern after the recent heavy rains and damp grounds.  A slight cool down is in store for the Southeast this weekend, but remaining above normal for January. Atleast skies should become partly cloudy with a rare sun appearance, before yet more rain arrives next week.  Unfortunately for snow lovers, I don't see any chances of the white stuff until middle February possibly.

Very Warm Pattern Soon ..Near Record High Temps

Strong warmth to spread across nation after mid January. The same weather pattern that has produced record breaking snow to Alaska and very cold temperatures in Canada will soon re-energize to create an unusual alignment, and a starkly different pattern than the last couple of Winters. The Pacific ocean will send strong storm after storm into the Pacific northwest from British Columbia, Seattle down to northern California over the next 1 to 2 weeks, creating some of the worst flooding and mudslides there in many years, with 10 to 20 FEET of snow in the mountains there.
Meanwhile the East and especially southern part of the country will begin to turn very warm after the middle of next week. All models show the jetstream pulling out of the area and heading well north into eastern Canada, with a Bermuda Ridge building into the Southeast. This will create a sudden burst of warmth and lead to a false early start to Spring by the latter part of January. The warmth could become nearly record breaking between Dallas Little Rock Memphis to Atlanta, where temperatures my get well into the 70's by late January, and 60s to low 70s are going to be common place all across the Southeast and southern plains, with 80's in central and southern Texas.  There will be periods of rain and thunderstorms in the South.
The bad news is all the warmth and moisture will cause many plants to bud way too early, daffodils, tulips, irises, some azaleas, Bradfords, Cherries and other plants prone to early warmth, and some are already on the verge of opening up, this new long lived warm pattern should fool them into thinking its Spring.  As we know, we're not done with Winter ...it really hasn't arrived and it will be interesting to see how February and early March play out with Winter Weather yet to arrive.

Coldest Airmass in 2 Years !!

Looks like the coldest airmass in a couple years is headed for the Southeast. It arrives early Monday morning and temperatures will fall through the day in the Western Carolinas and North Georgia. By Tuesday, our temperatures will stay well below freezing in the mountains, with lots of wind-blown snow. Even Asheville and some lower mountain communities will get in on the act.
Meanwhile, I'm forecasting temperatures to be below freezing all day Tuesday in places like Atlanta, Charlotte and Knoxville to Nashville and Greensboro.   Shelby may stay in the 20's for a High Temp...thats cold!

The Cold wave lasts around 3 days, and by the end of the week we begin moderating.  Take precautions now to wrap pipes, winterize your vehicle and prepare for this Shock to the system type of cold. 
High winds and blowing snow in the mountains will make for hazardous and ground blizzard conditions from Monday into Tuesday, so avoid un neccessary travel.  Wind chills there will fall well below zero.

A Bitter Cold first half of the Week....this is the forecast "high" temperatures on Tuesday

New Year Might Start off With a BANG

All models show the northern hemisphere entering another heightened period of extreme amplification--that means that the jetstream will buckle quickly--like a whiplash, and when that happens, major events occur. For several runs now the ECMWF or European model has shown a deep eastern trough early next week. The last couple of runs have really got deeper, colder and stormier for the Southeast and much of the East Coast by next week.
There's too much discrepancy on the model runs right now to say where the storm will develop, but for now its worth watching. I will mention the GFS model, which has been showing many cutoffs well in advance this season, doesn't show this one. However it did briefly have a similar event back on  December 22, which made it a run valid at 384 hours..so it could be a lucky strike for it. Either way, despite model indices, such as this being a La Nina, strong +AO and NAO, we still tend to get into a period of strong amplification about every 3 to 4 weeks, and twice these upper lows have dropped a little snow in the Tennessee Valley. Now if the ECMWF model is right, much colder air gets involved, and a potential major deep snowfall would result, but we can't say for sure yet.
One other thing, the ECMWF model also latched on early last year around this time, and caught the Christmas Southeast snowstorm from about a week out...eventually other models joined it.  I'll update how I think this goes when I get a feel for one way or the other, but I wouldn't be surprised to see the models work westward slightly with this cutoff, placing the Southeast in a major rain-to-snow storm, and potential historic deep snow for some areas, especially around the Appalachian Chain and adjoing piedmont. No guarantees on any particular storm though and this one may not work out quite like this, but believe me when I say we're nowhere near done with monster sized storms in the South.

I have been stating a while now that this Winter will be an Historic one in terms of snow depth, for some areas of the Southeast. I still think that, and the tell-tale sign is the fact that the models continue to show all the high amplitude pattern and the resulting "cut off" lows. We've seen several this season and very far south, so it's only a matter of time before someone is digging out of a snowfall they will remember a very long time.

Dec 22nd 18z run of GFS

GGEM (Canadian) Model heading toward Deeply Amplified Pattern for the early part of 2012

Very Cloudy Period Coming Up

Looks like more clouds than not for the Southeast over the next 10 days. There will be a few periods when the sun will shine, but I don't see any totally cloud-free days at all for a long time yet. The southern stream is very active right now and many times in December we get into this kind of flow for the bulk of the month. It will take a strong front to clear all of the clouds and moisture out, and we just don't have that type of front showing up yet.  Until then, look for periods of drizzle, light rain and murky, chilly weather.  Atleast we're not freezing to death like last year at this time, when Shelby got down into the single digits. On the other hand, I don't see any  BBQ grills or flip-flops in our future either.

What's the Chances of a Very Deep Snowstorm this Winter?

With the two minor snow events already in the Deep South, and in between the warm spells and record high temperatures, and all the rain in the Tennessee Valley and western Carolinas, I'm hearing rumors. Some are the cries of the death throws of Winter already, some are that it's too wet. Pick your poison. It depends on where you are in the South.  I have spent a great deal of time studying old weather patterns and specifically, for Shelby and points in western North and western South Carolina, all signs are pointing me toward a very increased chance at an unusually deep, major, rare mega-snowfall this season in our area.

To put things simply, the country, especially the Deep South and Ohio and Tennessee Valley region, are in the midst of an extremely active weather pattern. I've looked at old synoptic weather charts and I honestly don't see any comparison to what we're currently enduring. Time and time again strong upper lows or major "cutoff" storms are swirling through the South land and occasionally up the East Coast.  We have been very wet here around Shelby and the mountains of NC and especially wet on the other side of the Appalachians this Fall and now into December.  You have to go back to 2003 to find a comparably consistent wet year for most of Cleveland County, where it was consistently "wet" or atleast average. And that says something about our long term drought, especially in upper South Carolina and southern Rutherford and southern Cleveland County. Yet we've been at the center of many major weather events all year long, and if you're a snow lover, here's some news:   We've had 3 above normal snow years in a row. The last couple of seasons have been pretty easy to forecast well in advance, but this current season is much more tricky.  We don't have sustained cold, and we don't have Gulf lows tracking our way. However, we do have many, and I mean many upper lows that are "cut off" from the main flow. And as we're heading deeper into the colder months, already we are seeing signs of those swirling cutoff's drop snow. Its happened twice now in the Tennessee Valley and Appalachians, and its' not even Winter!  If you go back to some of Shelby's biggest snowstorms lately, they mostly come from strong upper lows. February 2004 and March 2009 (yes there is a huge gap between storms) were both strong upper lows that tracked in the right spot.
If you do the math, our odds are upped in a MAJOR way this year, simply because of the shear numbers of these systems that are in the flow. And there's still no end to them. The GFS model, which has been far superior in our neck of the woods this year (ever since just after the Christmas 2010 storm) continues to hone in on these things. They're still lined up as far as the eye can see, and just when the models try to overdevelop the warmth in the Southeast (yes we can get a day or 2 of above normal), the storm comes through and keeps temps cold, pulls down the colder air and turns rain to snow in spots.
The bottom line is the pattern this Winter is very ripe for a major, once in a lifetime, snowstorm in some spot of the South. It's impossible to nail down where this will track at this point, but it could be anywhere in the Southern states, and Shelby lies right in the heart of it.  As we get deeper into Winter, and have access to colder and colder air, one of these strong upper lows will pass directly along interstate 85 or Interstate 40, and place the Western Carolinas squarely in the throws of a Foot-Plus snowstorm...the kind that brings down trees and knocks out power. 
So while it appears we're not in a sustained cold spell like the previous two Winters, we have a tendency for troughing and very deep troughs and cutoffs in the Southern US this Winter, and in particular the western Carolinas seem to be in a wet pattern. There's no guarantee a major snow-dumping storm like this hits our area, but the odds are probably increased dramatically this year over any other year I can recall, simply because of how the pattern has been, and how it keeps repeating. It may happen in December, January, February or even March. Perhaps not at all for Shelby proper, but the odds do favor us.  I also noticed that during general overrunning events of the last decade of Winters, our area doesn't do quite as well in snowfall accumulations, however during strong upper lows and cutoffs, we do extremely well. Think February 26, 2004 and March 1, 2009...both were strong cutoffs in a very benign year. Based on what I'm seeing in the pattern this year, despite long range generic forecasts for our area, I have to say with strong conviction that we are heading toward a tree-smashing, power-thwarting, roof-collapsing whopper of a snowstorm. You've been warned.

Feb 2010 storm Satellite

Odds Are Higher Than Normal For One Or More Major Snowfalls In the Deep South This Winter, Thanks To Numerous "Cut-off and Upper-Lows"