A LITTLE PAYBACK COMING...
Excluding Monday's disruption, we just went through a 7 day period of extraordinary weather with the average high October 6-11th, 80 degrees in the Quad Cities. The weekend was brilliant, as good as it gets!
You can see this was quite a turn-around from where the month started. We went from a departure of 16 below normal the 3rd, to one that was16 above normal the 9th and 11th
Monday we took a a few steps back with a cold front that generated some clouds and scattered showers. Rain totals were meager in my area with the more significant amounts to to the north.
Here's some of the totals in my local area.
With the passage of the front and a shift in winds we are now in a cooler air mass. As of evening Monday temperatures were a good 12-15 degrees cooler than the same time 24 hours earlier.
Below you can see the clouds associated with the cold front passing off to the east with clearing skies and pleasant weather settling in for Tuesday and Wednesday. Highs should return to the 70-75 range of much of my region. The clouds approaching the Pacific northwest denote a strong front that is going to bring a sharp cool down that looks to be around in various degrees of intensity most of the period the 15th through the 24th.
One thing's for sure, with the storm track looking like this Friday it's adios warm weather.
The GFS by way of its temperature departures shows the extent of the cold air in the central and east
The GFS also has this for temperature departures day 5-10 (17th-22nd)
Then this for days 10-15 (22nd -27th)
As I mentioned last week this pattern is ripe for some parts of the Midwest to see their first snowflakes. It could come in two ways. The first would be just snow flurries or snow showers due to instability from the cold air aloft. No big deal. The second would actually be system snow from a disturbance traversing the thermal gradient. It's impossible to determine the timing and location of any such impulse at this distance but there are certainly hints of it in the models. As it stands now, the ensembles of both the GEFS and EURO EPS (combinations of a range of multiple solutions) shows this for snowfall amounts. This is not a forecast, just raw model output so take it with low confidence.
The GEFS
The EURO EPS
Obviously be watching the trends at TSwails.com. Whatever happens, we've got a couple excellent days ahead of us before the party comes to an end. Roll weather...TS
