No Winter So Far: A False Sense Of Security?
63 degrees on Saturday with heavy rain and some flooding. 60 mph winds yesterday, green grass, leaves still whipping about, an ice-free Lake Erie. I'm not complaining mind you, but where exactly is winter? And will we be paying for this in February and March?
Our friend Meteorologist Don Paul gave a bit of an explanation this week in his Buffalo News column...
The lack of wintry staying power is evident early (this) week, once again. Monday we’re back to the low 40s, and into the mid-40s on Tuesday and Wednesday. Looking out further in time, the model ensemble means (many multiple runs of individual models averaged out) still show no sign of a persistent western ridge of high pressure in western North America forcing a cold trough to develop near the Great Lakes or northeast.
The polar vortex is forecast to remain strong and closer to the North Pole, trapping much of the polar air far to the north most of the time. This is all markedly different from the cold and snowy January of 2019.
A reversion to a pattern something akin to this is not out of the question later in several weeks, but there are few indicators pointing in such a direction of persistence. For winter lovers, the absolute least reliable part of the GFS model, Day 16 of 16, does offer what might be meteorological fool’s gold as a glimmer of likely false hope, posted by Michael Ventrice of IBM.
Oh "Don of Weather" I hope your forecast holds true, and the skiers can get snow to the south and we in the Northtowns can have rain, and the Lake poses no threat, and all is well with the world.