FEBRUARY SHOWERS BRING MARCH...?

Friday was a record breaking day across the Central U.S. with dozens of locations reporting record high temperatures.

The pink and orange dots indicate tied or broken records and yellow is within 3 degrees of a record. This map shows the records from Friday afternoon:

More records will likely fall over the next six days as the jet stream stays in Canada and cold air gets locked up to the north.

Here are the 500 mb (upper air) height anomalies through next Wednesday. Persistent strong ridging in the upper levels will lead to the warm air moving in off the Pacific and an extended period of spring.

Temperatures will be in the upper 50s and low to mid 60s through Wednesday and maybe even Thursday of this upcoming week. It won't all be dry though, as two storm systems are expected to move through the area in the next 7 days.

The first storm moves in Monday and takes a track through the Dakotas and northern Minnesota. Warm air and moisture will surge in ahead of it. Dew points will even climb close to 60 degrees in spots - impressive for February!

There will actually be a little instability as the front moves through. Here's the CAPE (convective available potential energy) on the GFS:

More scattered and not as robust on the Euro: