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WHAT A DAY FOR A DAYDREAM
Holy cow, what a way to begin February. Sunshine, highs in the 50, and in some cases record highs. Ft. Madison in the far south was the hot spot peaking at 61 degrees. Not only that, skies were sunny and winds light. The perfect winter day, (especially if you hate winter). Notice the highs all around the nation. There's just no hint of true cold air all the way to the Canadian border.

WANT TO BLOW YOUR MIND?
If you really want to blow your mind (just for kicks, of course), get a load of this statistic. Three cities Thursday set record highs, Burlington at 60, Cedar Rapids with 56, and Dubuque at 51. That's impressive enough, but there's more, lows two weeks ago were 17 to 19 below. That means in Burlington, the temperature Thursday was 78 degrees warmer!

Is your mind blown yet? If not, this should do it. With the wind chills we saw two weeks ago near 40 below, that allowed readings to "feel" about 100 degrees warmer than at their worst January 14-15th. That's all I've got. If your mind is not blown, it already was! That is stunning stuff.
Needless to say, the atmosphere is just completely re-aligned. It's incredibly hard to generate a transformation like that February 1st. No way, no how, did I see anything like that coming 2 weeks ago. So there it is, the big block perched over the eastern Dakotas at 567 MB. It's like taking a giant boulder, maybe an asteroid, and plopping it in a stream. It diverts the flow (in this case air) from its typical westerly motion to one with a southerly component. Our temperatures have nowhere to go but up, and boy did they respond.

These were the 3:00pm departures Thursday afternoon. That little donut hole from Dubuque into NW Illinois is where enough snow remains to hinder the warm-up. The energy that otherwise would have gone into warming is reflected or, in this case, used largely to burn (melt) snow.

One change that takes place over the next couple of days is the ejection of energy out of the SW. An upper level low will carve its way out of the southern Rockies and then come face to face with the massive ridge that brought Thursday's warmth. While strong, the system will be no match for the ridge and will take the path of least resistance and remain to our south. Even so, winds will increase some out of the SE allowing enough warm advection and moisture to create an inversion. That means some low clouds or fog may develop, especially over the SW by Friday morning. If so, it should break, leaving partly to mostly sunny skies in its wake. Temperatures with SE winds and a few more clouds will be cooler, generally in the range of 45 to 50. The night vision GOES satellite image shows the storms clouds gathering to the south and west. The main energy is entering Arizona.

With the southern stream system bypassing the region, precipitation through next Wednesday will stay well to the southwest. Here's what the GFS shows for rainfall through next February 7th.

There is a disturbance on my radar around February 8th or 9th. That's a long way out, but some fresh energy comes out of the Rockies at that time as the current ridge breaks down, and we enter the initial stages of a pattern change. Guidance suggests there should be enough moisture in place for a surface low and cold front to interact with. Instability, thanks to temperatures of 55 to 60 should be present and might even scare up a few low-topped thunderstorms. Timing will be essential for such a scenario, and mesoscale details such as that are still far from certain. However, that appears to be the next chance of precipitation.
Meantime, temperatures remain far above normal, with highs generally in the 40s and 50s until a strong cold front arrives around February 15th. The EURO shows a healthy drop in readings at that time.

I continue to monitor a pattern change mid-February that seems destined to bring much colder temperatures, especially if the EURO is on track. Here's the EURO ext. control 500mb jet, February 24th.

The 850 temperature departures it brings look rather nasty. Time will tell.

Well, that's all for now. Just another day in paradise. Roll weather...TS PS Due to my recent health issues, I'm in need of your donation to the site more than ever. If you use it and find value in it, please consider a donation. Thanks to you who have already pulled the trigger!
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