Monday Forecast

7:01AM

DAYS 1-5 (FEBRUARY 10-14)
As we head into mid February, the large scale pattern will be dominated by a ridge of high pressure in the US Southeast, while we have an active jet stream sending low pressure systems in the battle zone between southeastern warmth and building colder air in Canada. Much of the winter we’ve had the arctic air bottled up far to the north, with the result being a very mild pattern since around the solstice (after colder weather before that). But some of that air will be released in small pieces and help build more cold to our north, intensifying the battle between the air masses. We’ll see 3 unsettled days as a result of this battle during the next 5 days: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday. Monday’s unsettled weather will be mainly the first half of the day and mainly in the form of rain, Tuesday’s will be mainly midday and afternoon and again mainly in the form of rain (which may start as a brief mix to the north), and Thursday’s, starting late Wednesday night, will begin as snow and probably transition to rain for most areas, though it may be little more of a struggle to get it to turn over to rain in southern NH as colder air that arrives Wednesday may be a little more stubborn. But what about Friday? Bundle up. It’s going to be pretty cold to end the week.
TODAY: Cloudy through midday with rain (possible mix higher elevations north central MA and southwestern NH) ending west to east early afternoon. Breaking clouds and just a risk of an additional rain shower thereafter. Highs 38-45. Wind S up to 10 MPH early, SW 5-15 MPH gusting to 20 MPH mid morning into afternoon, shifting to NW later.
TONIGHT: Mostly cloudy. Lows 30-37. Wind NW 5-15 MPH.
TUESDAY: Cloudy. Chance of rain southern NH and northern MA, rain likely elsewhere, mainly late morning to mid afternoon. Highs 38-45. Wind variable to N up to 10 MPH.
TUESDAY NIGHT: Clearing. Lows 23-30. Wind NW 5-15 MPH.
WEDNESDAY: Sun and high clouds. Highs 35-42. Wind N 5-15 MPH.
WEDNESDAY NIGHT: Clouding over. Snow arriving pre-dawn, mixing with or changing to rain South Coast. Lows 20-27. Wind NE up to 10 MPH.
THURSDAY: Overcast with rain South Coast, snow to rain most areas but may remain mixed southwestern NH. Highs 35-42. Wind E 5-15 MPH.
THURSDAY NIGHT: Clearing. Rapid freeze-up of any standing water / wet surfaces. Lows 13-20. Wind NW 10-20 MPH.
FRIDAY: Mostly sunny. Highs 25-32. Wind NW 15-25 MPH.

DAYS 6-10 (FEBRUARY 15-19)
Fair, cold February 15. Quick warm-up February 16 with late-day rain showers as low pressure tracks north of this area. Fair, colder weather returns February 17 into February 18 and the next system brings a chance of rain/mix/snow later February 18 or February 19.

DAYS 11-15 (FEBRUARY 20-24)
Fair, seasonably cold early period. Watching February 22-24 for potential winter storm threat.

73 thoughts on “Monday Forecast”

  1. Good morning and thank you TK.
    The Winter Doldrums continue, however, If I am not mistaken, I see a glimmer of
    hope based on TK’s analysis, but we’ve seen that before. We shall see.

  2. Just realized one of the 7 day forecasts has a big oopsie. Try to spot it and see how long it takes you lol

        1. Wow !! Conversely, I could have looked at all the outlooks and wouldn’t have picked that up in a million years !!

      1. Wait just a minute!!!! I don’t think that is correct as the
        10 first alert goes with the forecast below. DUH!()@(*#(*!

        So, I’m now with Tom, AS now I don’t know where the ooopsie
        is. I must look again.

    1. Let me make another attempt.

      channels 5,7,10 and 25 are identified, but the very first graphic
      has no station identification.

      1. Good one!! I think my brain is FRIED!!!!
        Thanks for catching that and straightening me out. πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚ πŸ™‚

        1. I think if it verifies it will be the biggest temp swing im Boston history! If I need to fry any eggs I’ll do it on the sidewalk tonight.

  3. Ciara was a massive Northern Atlantic storm, one which impacted an incredibly large area. The storm is still impacting flights in the Netherlands and elsewhere as the back side continues to produce gale force gusts. That’s 48 straight hours of at least gale force (Beaufort 8) gusts along the coast of the Netherlands, and strong gale (Beaufort 9) along the British coasts. At its height the storm reached sustained Beaufort 10 and 11 in many areas with hurricane-force wind (Beaufort 12) at the coastline.

    1. Thanks, TK…

      Rob Carolan said this morning that Ciara was our storm here on Friday afternoon.

      There were a number of English and Scotish soccer matches postponed because of that powerful storm yesterday, which is very rare in European “football.”

      I also heard that a New York to London flight broke a record for the shortest transatlantic flight because of the powerful tailwind. I don’t have time to find the article right now.

    1. That’s all well and good, but by then we are beginning to run out of time.
      Perhaps Winter’s last Hurrah????

    2. Other teleconnections looking less hostile in 2 weeks as well…..

      NAO trending neutral….

      https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/pna/nao.shtml

      PNA trending positive….

      https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/pna/pna.shtml

      AO becoming less positive with some of the ensembles actually taking it towards neutral….

      https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao.shtml

      Perhaps the pattern may finally be relaxing in a few weeks? We’ll see…

      1. And 90 miles to my north….

        At this point, I cant wait to get up to Sugarloaf ME for a few days late next week/weekend. I am in serious snow/cold withdrawal and resisting the urge daily to become as grumpy as you πŸ™‚

        1. I skied Sugarloaf once long, long ago.

          It was windy and we got stuck on the gondola for a good 1/2 hour and when we continued and reached the top, they shut it down for the day. Ended up using T-Bars all day. The conditions were pretty icy with a a fresh 2-4 inches of powder on top of BOILER PLATE that was often exposed due to the wind. I loved the area, but had a really, really bad experience.

          Wishing you a FAR better experience!!!

          1. Thank you. I have only been there once as well and it was over 15 years ago. They have added a lot of backcountry terrain since then and they have the Snowfields, the only above treeline lift serviced terrain in the East.

            Conditions are good up there right now and should get better with the storms lined up the next few weeks, if we can avoid a major cutter. There is no gondola there now, but they have a few high speed quads. It is notoriously windy and cold up there so perhaps we picked the right year to go in this relatively mild winter.

  4. So thursday is looking like an inch or 2 of snow for the Boston area before
    going right over to RAIN. Waiting on the Euro.

      1. kablooey!!!

        Yes, and inch or 2 like I stated and I believe that when I see it.
        Yet another opportunity down the toilet.

  5. Answer to yesterday’s Trivia Quizzes

    1. On this date [yesterday] in 2013 and 2015, the exact same amount of snow fell in Boston. How much was it?
    A. 10.3β€³
    B. 12.6β€³
    C. 14.8β€³
    D. 21.4β€³

    2. Today marks the anniversary of the coldest day ever recorded in Boston. What was the high/low combination? (This probably occurred in the pre-Logan days.)
    A. 3/-18
    B. 5/-13
    C. 6/=12
    D. 8/-11

    The correct answer to # 1 is C, and # 2 is A.

  6. Thanks TK!

    Pretty solid cold shot coming up for the end of the week, certainly relative to just about anything we’ve seen this winter. After this midweek warmth the overall pattern should turn into one of more ups and downs as opposed to all out blowtorch. But it’s the classic cold and dry or mild and wet pattern. I feel confident we’ll sail through 2/20 without a widespread moderate or greater synoptic snow event in most of SNE. The clock will be ticking more quickly by then. As usual some guidance is trying to turn us more sustained cooler by 10-15 days out. Will it happen this time? Maybe the MJO could at least start to turn more favorable as Mark posted. But the AO argues hard against it. Most positive AO on record occurring right now, a rather significant event, and the forecast remains strongly positive. Bottom line, no indications to me that any wholesale changes are on the way.

      1. *Early* thinking is continued above average temperatures (overall, but with a few more below normal days than we’ve seen in recent months) and near normal precip with near to below normal snow. But my confidence isn’t too high right now as you can probably tell from that rather hedge-y answer πŸ˜‰

    1. Excellent news thank you . I feel for my snow friend here but The winters lately have been extremely east to take .

      1. The lack of snow here has been remarkable, especially after December got off to a pretty busy start at least a little further north. 0.3″ would be the second least snowy winter on record for Philly. The 1972-73 winter failed to produce measurable snow in the city.

        Tomer is a friend of mine, awesome guy. I enjoyed that plot πŸ™‚

    2. At least some hope in the teleconnections today. I’ll settle for a moderately positive AO if we can get some of the others indices to flip in our favor. May generate some “windows of opportunity”.

      I’d be interested to see data on the correlation between the MJO and AO. AO is record positive today and MJO is a weak Phase 5.

  7. Latest 6z CFS…

    -Warm and wet for the next two weeks (thru ~Feb 24)

    -Cold and drier for weeks 3 thru 6 (Feb 24-March 24)

    IF this pattern change does occur, perhaps we can pick something up in late February around the time we are in the “transition” period. I know TK has been talking about this potential for some time.

  8. Missed on the average precipitation for the first half of February. I thought the guidance was a bit overdone in precip amounts. It was right…Feel pretty good about the the turn to seasonable cold more days than not in February part 2. Still don’t see any significant snow events. Then post 2/20 is my date whee daytime sun angle starts to trend more impactful so that will work against 30 plus degree snow events…I have zero confidence in the March cold and stormy thought mentioned above.

    Re Thursday: there is nothing to keep cold air in place. Let it start as snow and then cut any modeled snowfall amounts in 1/2.

    Central Pioneer Valley / CT River Valley and we have no snow on the ground.

    1. Thanks JMA.

      If you were referring to my posts, I want to clarify that I did not say anywhere that I thought March would be “cold and stormy”. I referenced some easing teleconnections which might give us some windows of opportunity and did post the outcome of the latest CFS run which is indicating colder, but also drier weather in March.

      1. Yes, I totally get what you are saying. Sorry for misleading or confusing.

        One note on models – all of them are polluted by climo and this anomalous pattern is anything but climo. Basically, it trends everything too cold.

  9. I’m not sure if it was mentioned above anywhere but does anybody remember which season had the previous record positive Arctic Oscillation?

      1. Yes. And the winter of 1989-1990 started out with the coldest December on record for Boston, followed by one of the all-time warmest January/February combinations.

        Sometimes the indices just do these things. This year, MJO and AO are working as a sinister team against the snow lover, which is perfectly ok with me despite my love for the snowstorm, since I previously mentioned all the running around I have to do with my mom. I’m not sure if we’ll make it all the way through March this lucky, but I wouldn’t complain if we did. πŸ™‚

  10. These warm fronts passing through with ease. If you like snow south east ridge is doing it’s dirty work.

    1. Similar in 2011-2012, with the exception of March during which the hot air fan blew as far north as Caribou. My daughter was in Quebec City in February 2012, and there was a ton of snow. It was a mild winter overall, but the systems that passed over us were sliding south of Quebec and this produced snowfall after snowfall after snowfall.

      1. I posted on this recently but I recall 2011-2012 as being a furnace pretty much everywhere with a lack of snow right up into southern Canada. I remember the ski areas of NNE were really hurting that year unlike this year where they are flourishing. Perhaps Quebec City was just far enough north to get in on the snow. I dug this up…

        https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/2011–12_United_States_winter_average_temperature_anomaly.gif

        The entire continent was hurting that winter, even the West. A bit of a different look from this winter where there have been haves and have nots.

  11. It’s going to feel like winter for sure this weekend.

    Check out these temps for Saturday AM from the 12z UKMET. LOL! Initialization error?

    https://www.pivotalweather.com/model.php?m=ukmet&p=sfct&rh=2020021012&fh=120&r=us_ne&dpdt=&mc=

    That said, 12z Euro isn’t much warmer….

    https://www.pivotalweather.com/model.php?m=ecmwf_full&p=sfct&rh=2020021012&fh=120&r=us_ne&dpdt=&mc=

    Probably a bit overdone, esp. in the areas lacking snow. Hard to get that cold where there is no snow cover.

    1. Off the top of my head, I believe it was early March last year 2019 close to if not exceeding 13 inches. It was a quick hitter and the temps in Boston never got anywhere near freezing (32) and held between 35-36 degrees during the event. I actually made it to work that Monday morning with 10 minutes to spare.

    2. Are you talking about the city of Boston (as in Logan), or in general? Most places had around or over a foot and some areas had up to 2 feet in the early December snow event.

Comments are closed.