Good Monday bloggers,
Today is mercifully the last official day of hurricane season 2020. It was a record hurricane season with 30 named storms. You can still get one or two systems in December. There is a weak system now in the eastern Atlantic Ocean, hopefully it won't add to the record.
When we organize the names from the jumble of the tracks we can see that we had an unfortunate lesson on the Greek Alphabet. The only other season to get to Greek names was 2005.
Four of the thirty named storms hit Louisiana causing all kinds of problems. These systems were Laura, Delta, Cristobal and Marco. Unreal.
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Now let's get to our weather as we track a storm system taking an odd track.
This is a map of the upper level flow which I like to call the "graphical version of the satellite." It is the flow at 18,000 feet which shows us the storm systems (troughs) and ridges.
UPPER LEVEL FLOW MONDAY: A big storm system is located in the eastern USA as a big upper level low forms in the Midwest. You can also see two weaker waves, one in the Pacific Northwest and one just to its north. These are the waves that will affect us.
UPPER LEVEL FLOW TUESDAY: The two waves will track east to the northern Plains/northern Rockies and then turn south. The big eastern storm will be drifting into southeast Canada.
UPPER LEVEL FLOW WEDNESDAY: The two storm systems combine to one pretty large upper level low over southern Kansas and northern Oklahoma. This puts our region in a quadrant of the storm where you can get some decent amounts of precipitation.
There will be a chance of rain and snow, but there are still many questions with this system.
How much moisture does it pick up from the Gulf of Mexico? The big eastern storm took much of the Gulf of Mexico moisture with it. Will we see rain or snow? If we see snow, any accumulation? It depends on temperatures which at this time look a bit too warm for accumulating snow. Could we see black ice Friday AM if surfaces are wet?
Let's take a look at this day by day with our Powercast.
MONDAY: It will be sunny with much less wind than Sunday. Highs will be around 40 with abundant sunshine.
Here is a better look at the big eastern USA storm. If you have travel plans out east, keep this in mind. Snow will fall from northern Georgia to southeast Canada. This weather may create a ripple affect of delays to many airports across the USA.
TUESDAY: It will be another nice day with lows in the 20s and highs 40-45. There will be abundant sunshine with Southeast winds 5-15 mph.
WEDNESDAY-THURSDAY: The latest data has enough moisture to bring around .50" of rain and melted snow. It is not cold enough for the snow to accumulate around here, but it is cold enough just west of our area.
Again, there are many questions with this storm. The two main questions are; How much moisture can this storm pull out of the Gulf of Mexico? And, if there is enough moisture, will it be cold enough for accumulating snow?
We will know more on Tuesday as this storm is evolving in an odd way which makes the forecast even more tough than usual.
FRIDAY-SUNDAY: Regardless of how the storm evolves and affects us, we will see a return to nice weather by Friday or Saturday. This data has the storm long gone by Friday. Highs will warm to the 50s by Saturday or Sunday.
Have a great week ahead and stay healthy.
