DROUGHT WATCH IN EFFECT FOR NEW JERSEY

10:50 AM

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This morning I discussed my concern for convective snowfall along the New Jersey coast in the public post.  I wanted to give more details on this threat this morning.

This morning I took a look at the latest sounding from OKX, which is on Long Island.  Granted, the sounding is still a bit of a distance away from southern New Jersey, but it is the closed observed sounding in the region and gives a good overall look of the atmosphere.  Note the temperature structure from the surface to 900 MB where temperatures are colder at the surface than aloft.  My concern here is that this structure will become more unstable along the New Jersey coast up to 850 MB, which will cause a strong frontogentical circulation from the surface up to the mid levels.  This signal strongly is signaling the potential for mesoscale banding along the southern and central New Jersey coast and would lead to higher snowfall totals than forecasted.  The other factor is that cold air advection at the mid levels is still on going and will intensify this vertical gradient as the low levels remain relatively warm under the influence of precipitation.  There may even be a potential for convective snowfall that leads to thunder snow, so I’ll be on the look out for that this evening in the live updates.

Stratosphere Keeps On Rocking:

This morning’s observations are officially showing above normal temperatures and a continued rise in temperatures throughout the stratosphere.  Well above normal temperatures are now being observed down to 30 MB and slightly above normal temperatures reach down to 100 MB.  The troposphere is starting to feel the impact as well as the blocking I’m expecting for February is starting to develop with a negative EPO and a crashing negative Arctic Oscillation.  These indications strongly point to the majority of the cold air masses to focus towards North America.

Meanwhile, the influence of the stratosphere is now strongly influencing the MJO.  The MJO is strongly in stage 7 and forecasts are suggesting the MJO to remain in this state for some time.  This stage of the MJO strongly suggests an active Sub Tropical jet stream that will likely bring plenty of surprises.  The combination of these features are the teleconnections I was pointing to for the storm for next week.

As far as models are concerned, I think this morning’s developments are a perfect example of the trouble that the models are going to have in the coming weeks.  The fact is that the MJO in phase 7 means that the disturbances from the Sub Tropical jet stream at the upper and mid levels are going to be more energetic.  The region that these disturbances are exiting from are from regions where data collection is poor at best and thus the medium and long range guidance is going to have an awful hard time picking up the nature of potential threats and the extent of cold air to work with.

The more I look at the teleconnections for February through early March, the more I’m thinking this time period is going to bring some very interesting and wintery events to the northern Mid Atlantic.  A lot of the features needed for such a pattern are coming together.  The only question I have is how do the individual disturbances work together, which will determine the areas that get the most bang for the buck from this pattern.