- Mar 28, 2018

WHERE FOR ART THOU SPRING....

If you're looking for spring warmth, don't expect to find much around the Midwest the next couple of weeks. The signals are strong starting with the MJO that cool will be the rule the next 10-14 days. You can see the Madden Julien Oscillation (MJO) getting set to head into phase 7 as we begin April....follow the dotted green line on the left. The phase 7 analogs are cool centered on the Midwest in April.

Another teleconnection that strongly suggests cool is the WPO (western Pacific Oscillation). It's highly negative at 5 standard deviations below the base line on the EURO!

The negative phase in April is quite cool over the NC United States.

The Climate Prediction Center concurs showing these probabilities for 8-14 day temperature departures.

Here's the precipitation departure for the same period.

The CFSv2 climate model is really bullish on the chill. Here's the temperature departures in 5 day increments the next 20 days through mid-April. Day 0-5

Day 5-10

Day 10-15

Day 15-20

The departure for the entire 20 day period ending April 16th.

I'm sure there will be a few mild days in there but if you average it out, far more cool days than warm ones.

By the way, Easter weekend does not look great from a weather perspective. Both the GFS and EURO show some rain for Saturday, perhaps mixed with snow in the northern parts of my area. The GFS is the model showing some snow. Still lots of question marks about the track and thermal profiles but I think the trend will be more towards rain in coming runs of the GFS. However, southern Wisconsin, Minnesota and far northern Iowa could see some wet accumulations.

What does look certain is that the Easter Bunny will have on his heavy coat this year. Unseasonably cold air will be in charge producing highs that could be 20 degrees below normal in my area. The EURO has this for high temperatures. Lots of 30s