GIT THE BIG COAT OUT...
And then it was cold. Yes Virginia, the party is over! However, we managed to go out strong Thursday with all of the area establishing record highs, in some case for the second consecutive day. Here's what's in the books now.
RECORD HIGHS THURSDAY NOVEMBER 10th
Moline.................78 (74, 2020)
Burlington..........75 (73, 2020)
Cedar Rapids.....72 (72, 2012)
Dubuque............70 (69, 2012)
If you forgot where the big coat is, now's the time to remember. Temperatures at 8:00am Friday morning are projected to look like this. Down 40-45 degrees from Thursday afternoon. There may even be some lingering rain and snow showers very early but those will beat a hasty retreat.
Where things get really uncomfortable is when the wind is factored in. Gusts of 30 mph will combine with the cold to create wind chills in the teens NW of the Mississippi and the low 20s further southeast, meaning it will feel 55 degrees colder than just 18 hours earlier. That's going to be hard to swallow.
Speaking truth to the strength of the front, this graphic shows 3 hour temperature falls up to 23 degrees as it passed Thursday evening.
Now that the cold has broken through, it will be with us all weekend. Skies will clear out Friday morning for some sunshine put it won't help temperatures much as strong cold air advection keeps readings steady or falling all day . Wrap around clouds will push back in from the north later in the day and persist into Saturday. Some minor vorticity and cold air aloft may also squeeze out some spotty snow showers or flurries, especially in the north. Highs both Saturday and Sunday will remain in the mid to upper 30s.
That's not even the worst of the chill. That's expected Friday of next week when highs are shown in the 20s on the EURO. Readings like that are at least 20 degrees below normal as you can see in the departures for November 18th.
What's of more interest is what happens next week with a complex interaction of energy that feeds in from the southern and northern stream branches of the jet. How and to what degree it phases or interacts will determine whether accumulating snow can materialize in some part of the region. Confidence is still a bit low due to the above reasons but in general the ensembles of the EURO and GFS due point to some snow. The majority of this occurs Tuesday and Wednesday. Take a look.
The EURO ensemble mean
The deterministic run of the EURO is fairly consistent compared to the 51 members of the ensemble..
The EURO ensemble itself shows probabilities of 1 inch or more of snow ranging from 50 percent south to 80 percent north. Pretty good odds.
The GFS ensemble mean for the same period is seeing some snow but less than the EURO
However, its deterministic run is at odds indicating little if anything at all.
The National Model Blend is kind of in the middle showing this. I think it's a good compromise for where we are in the game right now. Obviously, there's details to work out and we should get a better idea of where this is headed in the next couple of days.
As for the cold in the longer range, there should be some moderation in the pattern just before Thanksgiving as the MJO heads out of the cold phases and eventually slips back into phase 6, (that's where we were when our recent warmth started a couple weeks ago). You can watch the progression out of phase 8 today into 6 between now and November 24th by following the dotted green line. Each dot represents a day.
Something to note, the last day of the cycle (the 24th), the MJO is amplifying and ready to enter phase 7. That's a cold phase which implies the warm-up may be brief, a matter of several days. Something to ponder.
Well then, git your big old coat and get after it today. After all, it's Friday! Have a great weekend and roll weather...TS
