Cold and possible stormy pattern next week, but not quite snowy yet.

Some of the coldest air of the season could be on the way next week; this is fairly certain. What’s not so certain is the chance for a storm to go along with this cold air. All signals are pointing to a weakening of the polar vortex which will lead to a big time trough dumping arctic air into the eastern US. The GFS ensembles point to a huge negative 500 mb anomaly next week over the eastern U.S. This means a fairly strong trough or dip in the jetstream.

What’s not as certain is will the storm track from the Gulf to the east coast develop coupled with this cold air. The GFS ensembles are hitting hard at this, but they are still all over the place. There is not a lot of support from the ECMWF model. There is a hint there as well but at this time range the skills in all these models on storm tracks, intensity and types are just not very good.

That being sai this is a favorable pattern, so it’s something to watch but not much more right now. With a set-up like this, you just don’t know 7-10 days out anything more than conditions are favorable for some winter weather somewhere on the east coast and to stay tuned.

Here are the various ensemble members. Take note of the mean at the bottom, basically the average of all the runs.