I'm having a hard time finding a cloud in the sky here in the GTR, and the visible satellite imagery shows this nicely. Most of the cloud cover is up to our northeast associated with a large, longwave trough of low pressure.
Here's that trough of low pressure. Because we are in a negative NAO, troughs have a hard time moving through because we have a blocking high pressure over the northern Atlantic. Because of this, we'll see several more reinforcing shots of colder air in the form of dry cold fronts.
You can clearly see the temperature gradient associated with our next frontal passage poised to occur tomorrow afternoon. Notice the blues over Missouri; those are pretty cold temperatures and that air is on the way here!
Notice the winds in the lower levels are out of the west in advance of that front. That's because winds don't have time to back around to the south to allow any moisture return. Because of this, I think we'll only see some mid to high level clouds associated with this frontal passage--certainly no rain to worry with.
Strong high pressure builds in behind this next frontal passage. Subsidence will be abundant with this feature, so no clouds are expected Friday or Saturday with very, very dry conditions with dew point temperatures well down in the 30s. Cold air advection will be wide open, and we'll struggle to get to the low 60s despite maximum sunshine.
As discussed in yesterday's post, the NAO looks to be trending towards neutral by the end of the month. We may be seeing the first effects of this as that pesky trough finally begins to weaken and lift out to the northeast. It looks like we get some return flow off the Gulf and w'ell see moisture slowly return and also temperatures will respond as well. Some clouds will be likely by the first part of next week along with the return of low to mid 70s!
IW
No comments:
Post a Comment