Happy New Year!

We finished 2015 with a record-breaking average temperature for December.  No secret here…it was warm!

Winter 2016 is looking colder at the start and the trajectory of the flow from the strong El Ninio is changing, with the moisture from the Pacific entering  further south along California instead of Washington state.  This trajectory usually means more interaction over the southern states and eventually here in the Northeast.

The medium range models have been trending colder than forecast just a few days ago.  This means that later this weekend and early next week, we’ll have much colder than average temperatures, something that hasn’t occurred since November.  A previously forecast warmup that had been expected the end of next week doesn’t appear to be as warm.

Currently, the interaction of the broad, cold air upper air trough and the southern stream moisture is expected to occur over the Atlantic, leaving our area sunny and cold.

But this jet configuration is a recipe for storm formation.   With the new upper air pattern emerging just now, the amount of cold weather and storm development is in flux and forecasts more than 5 days away are expected to be highly changeable.    Expect a more active pattern of weather here after next Wednesday.

A slowly advancing warm front is bringing very wet weather to our area today and  should taper off on Thursday.  Thursday should be dryer, but  it’s still possible that we would have a few showers. Temperatures are expected to be in the 70s and likely recordbreaking. The frontal boundary pushes south of us again on Friday allowing for a period of drier weather, but it’s not clear how much sun we will get on Friday.

On Saturday the front pushes  north of us again with some increased chances of rain and those chances of showers linger through Sunday.   It’s possible we’ll get some bright skies and maybe even some sunshine,  but the odds are against it and timing  will be difficult.

Basically cloudy,  mild and wet weather will be with us through next Tuesday.

The first chance of near normal cold weather is New Years Day.

Another week of well-above average temperatures is expected for our area, and this has been highly advertised by most of the news and weather shows.  Indeed, relatively mild weather is likely through the end of 2015.

Of interest is a change in weather pattern configuration that seems to be suggested by the some of the long-range models.   For the first time this season, a mixed precipitation storm (mostly rain for us) may occur sometime around December 29th.

Even more interesting, the GFS is suggesting a major nor’easter sometime around January  5th.

I wouldn’t take any of these specific GFS forecasts too seriously at this time, but what’s noteworthy is that the GFS is for the first time this season predicting some serious interaction between between cold air and the El Ninio moisture right in our area .

Update 12/21 –  Some of those long range pattern changes suggested by the GFS have disappeared.   It looks warm into the first week of January.