NEVER A DULL MOMENT...

terryswails1
13 minutes ago
4 min read

Even when the weather is mild, it can be far from good, and Thursday was a perfect example of that. Most of my southern counties hit 50, and even the north maxed out over 40. However, most areas had rain through morning and then with the arrival of our cold front, the wind turned to the NW and by evening gusts of 45 to 50 mph were common with cold air advection in full force. Temperatures spiraled in the Quad Cities from a high of 50 around 9:00am to a reading of 17 by 8:00pm with a wind chill of 4 below zero! Throw in a brief period of sunshine and some evening snow showers and that's a full day of weather. As the saying goes, never a dull moment around these parts!

Speaking of that, around 4:00pm Thursday my phone alert went off and when I looked at the text, I saw a winter storm warning had been issued for my counties in Iowa from I-80 north (including the Quad City metro area).

Frankly, my initial thought was that it was a mistake. But on further inspection., it didn't take long to see it indeed was the real thing. By then, my phone was exploding with questions about blizzard conditions and travel concerns. I'm not going to say much about the warning other than I was not in any way associated with the decision to issue it. I'm sure it was well intended, but I think the issuance probably caused more problems than it solved. I could have seen a marginal winter weather advisory, but in the end we never came close to reaching advisory criteria, let alone a winter storm warning. Beyond that, I never saw anything that indicated we would in the first place. In retrospect, nobody picked up with more than a trace of snow locally. I suspect somebody would like a mulligan on that shot.

Well, that's water over the dam, and now we are back in the cold air. Temperatures Friday morning thanks to the stinger will be more than 30 degrees colder than 24 hours earlier in the single digits and teens.

As the day wears on, temperatures will climb into the upper teens in the far north where some meager snow cover remains, to near 30 in the far south. Another disturbance in the fast moving flow has the region back in warm air advection Friday night. Steady or slowly rising temperatures are expected, with highs on Saturday back above freezing and in the range of 37 north to 45 south.

Saturday night, another stout cold front plows southeast and sends temperatures tumbling, especially in my northern counties where lows could dip into the single digits. The south is grazed by the cold and lows there will be more manageable in the low to mid 20s south of I-80. The EURO shows this for a spread.

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GOING FOR THE GUSTO, CHRISTMAS?

By Sunday afternoon, we again turn winds to the south and go from cold to warm air advection. However, this time around a ridge continues to build and temperatures are going to steadily grow warmer, reaching their peak Christmas day. In fact, if trends hold, record to near record highs are a real possibility. Who asked Santa for that! Here's what the latest GFS and EURO show for highs December 25th. The GFS has 70 in Keokuk!!

The GFS

The EURO has 69 in Keokuk.

Here are the existing records for Christmas day highs. We are right on track to challenge them.

This the 500mb jet stream pattern that delivers the toasty air. What an incredible change in the overall long wave pattern.

This is really something, at 850mb (a mile up) temperatures are +17 to +18 C. That's something you would expect on a typical July day. I don't have sounding records for DVN, but if that's not a record, it has to be very close. Climate change is no joke, and it needs to be taken seriously, whatever your politics.

Just look at the temperature departures Christmas, some as much as 37 degrees above normal

Below are the 2 week meteograms for the Quad Cities from both the GFS and EURO. Only one day after today has a high below freezing on the GFS.

To the contrary, the EURO has 3 days below freezing, but overall is consistent with the very mild look of the GFS into the beginning of January.

I haven't talked much about precipitation because there isn't any that's worth talking about. The upper air alignment severely restricts moisture, with the storm track well removed from the Midwest. This is what the EURO indicates from now through January 2nd. That's ridiculous.

There you have it, folks, mild and dry weather appears destined to be our future. Maybe we will see a dull moment after all (in fact, maybe a bunch of them). Happy Friday and roll weather...TS