GONE WITH THE WIND...

At least for the foreseeable future, any true wintry weather is gone with the wind. This exceptionally stable pattern is showing no signs of relenting, meaning what we've been getting is what we'll continue to receive. In general, that means mild, quiet weather until further notice. At least for now Scarlett, winter is gone with the wind.

Take a look at this map showing 500mb jet stream heights around North America. Notice all the blues from the North Pacific to Alaska through the North Pole and Greenland. That signifies lower than normal heights, which are a reflection of pressure. In this case, low pressure is dominating the Polar regions.

For those of you who paid attention in physics class, cold air is more dense than warm air, it wants to sink. The colder the air, the higher the pressure it exerts. So when heights are high at Polar latitudes, so is surface pressure. We are not seeing that now with low heights prevailing. Without higher pressure, there is minimal cold air available to seed and force its way south into the mid-latitudes of the Midwest. It's all locked up in Siberia. That is depicted clearly in the temperature departures below for December 24th. Significantly above normal readings are shown across most of North America. Much of Canada is showing departures that are 20-35 degrees above the norms.

With the pattern expected to flourish through Christmas (and beyond), the EURO meteogram indicates temperatures well above normal through December 25th. There's a lot of 40s showing up, and nothing worse than 38 for a high after today.

Remarkably, the GFS is quite similar, showing the stability in the pattern. It also leads to high confidence in above normal temperatures right on through Christmas to December 27th. After Tuesday, it has 15 consecutive days in the 40s. That is flat out wrong!

The Climate Prediction Center has a high probability of above normal temperatures now posted for the period December 19-25th. Ho, ho, ho...not!

Precipitation is shown below normal as well with all the high pressure in place.

Most of the northern 2/3rds of the nation is indicated to be much below normal on precipitation.

Christmas Day, the EURO indicates this for snow cover around the central U.S. That's about as bad as it gets. A brown Christmas is looking more and more likely for the central Midwest.

Compare that with snow cover last Christmas. Snow was on the ground all the way to northern Mississippi and Alabama!

While we are at it, Monday's snow cover came in like this. Bad sledding everywhere.

I guess there's not much more to say. No sense beating a dead horse as they say. Hopefully something changes by Christmas week, but by all accounts, it's not happening this week. Very disappointing from my perspective! Roll weather...TS

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Carolyn