Raleigh Weather Discussion
The threat of some light freezing rain could persist through mid-morning but most areas are near 32/33 right now so there have been and I anticipate no significant problems. A steadier rain will likely develop later today and overnight through the first half of tomorrow. By then though the wedge will weaken and temperatures should warm into the 40s tomorrow with the rain ending in the afternoon/evening.
Sunday should be dry with temperatures climbing into the upper 50s. A new storm system will move towards the area Monday evening and into Tuesday. As of now, partial thickness forecasts and forecast soundings do not support any precipitation type issues with this system and so for now it looks to be an all rain event.
The pattern then turns colder for mid to late next week as we see the NAO turn significantly negative and a 500mb vortex set up over SE Canada and New England, a pretty anomalous pattern for this time of year. This will push cold air well to the south with a last frost/freeze extending into Florida.
The pattern seems very threatening for a suppressed storm system to form and bring the threat of wintry precipitation to areas far to the south. However, the models are not latching on to any one s/w yet or one storm system. Some of the various ensemble members do show winter storms, but none of the operational models yet, although the 00z ECMWF is very close. Stay tuned to the 2/28 through 3/5 time frame as I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see a storm threat pop up in that time window. Either way it looks to be well below normal temperature wise.
National Extended Weather Discussion
The ensemble continue to point to a pattern with a strong –NAO and +PNA which looks to peak around the day 8-12 range, but maintain at least some resemblance to that through the 11-15 day period, which takes us into the first 10 days of March. Some runs of the GFS and GFS Ensemble yesterday showed the pattern breaking down late in the period, but the 00z and 06z runs have backed off that change a bit today. The 00z GGEM Ens is warmer late in the period, but the ECMWF Ensemble maintains a cold looking pattern through the period.
Last night’s Euro weeklies look cold through the first 2/3 of March or so before weakening the cold some by week 4. The latest CFS weekly also strongly agrees with the Euro weeklies. This would mean winter will hold on through the first half or 2/3 of March before finally weakening by the latter half/1/3 of the month. IF the Ensembles are right I could certainly see that happening.
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