Why you shouldn’t write off Winter just yet.
We set a record high of 82° today, and things are looking warm into next week. Even so here are a few reasons why I wouldn’t start thinking we are done with winter just yet.
The Calendar and History:
It’s only February 16th as of this writing. We historically can get winter weather well into the middle of March. Look no further than last year when we had the warmest February on record for Charlotte. Then on March 12th, we had a nice 1-3″ snowstorm followed by a horrible killing freeze that saw record lows and a devasting freeze to the Peach and Fruit tree Crops.
The Polar Vortex is weakening right now:
Something that gives pause to the cancel winter thoughts, is what is going on right now in the Arctic. There is what we call a Sudden Stratospheric Warming event underway.
This sudden warming of the Stratosphere weakens the Polar Vortex which basically allows for cold air to spill South. When the polar vortex is strong, it holds all the cold air up north. The thing about these events, you know someone is getting cold, but you don’t always know where. Cold air is like water spilling off the top of a ball you know it’s rolling off but where is hard to know. That being said we have an idea which I’ll talk about next.
The NAO and AO are going negative:
So this is kinda geeky stuff, but the Arctic Oscillation and especially the North Atlantic Oscillation indices are going negative, big time over the next two weeks. This is being driven by the weakening of the Polar Vortex due to that Sudden Stratospheric Warming event I talked about above. Look at the various ensemble models all show a very negative index.
So what does a Negative NAO mean?
Simply cold and snowy weather is possible in the eastern U.S. thanks to blocking in the North Atlantic. This generally allows for Arctic Air to be forced down into the Great Lakes and Eastern Seaboard regions.
What the models are showing:
One word of caution with models they have a tough time handling these crazy events like the Polar Vortex weakening and such negative indices. So anything is possible but the fact that we have all these things pointing to cold and stormy at the very least I can say chances are not gone yet for wintry weather or cold until the end of March. March is always a wild month around here and this year I don’t expect anything different.
