Winter Weather

https://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/wwd/winter_wx.shtml

Here are the latest hazards across the country.   Green is flooding. Brown is wind, Gray is fog.  Reddish is a red flag advisory. Purple/Pink is cold/Winter weather.

See the rest at the link below.

                          https://www.spc.noaa.gov/  Go to "hazards"                                                                                       

High Temperatures today and Saturday.

Warm in the West and East today, chilly in between.

Highs for days 3-7:

 
COLD BLASTS with increasing intensity Northcentral. Warm Southeast.

How do these days 3-7 temperatures compare to average at this time of year?

 
Cold blasts in the Plains/Midwest will result in the area and magnitude of blue's increasing there for numerous days ahead!

Warming Southeast.

Low Temperature Departures:

Surface features for the same 3-7 day period:

Very active.  Big storm early. Major cold air intrusions next week with reinforcing cold fronts ...........high confidence!!!

Current Dew Points

Dry air except for Southeast/East Coast.

Latest radar loop

Heavy showers moving east now.

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/radar_tab.php

Rains the past 24 hours

You can go to this link to see rain totals from recent time periods:

https://water.weather.gov/precip/

                              Go to precipitation, then scroll down to pick a time frame. Hit states to get the borders to see locations better. Under products, you can hit "observed" or "Percent of normal"      

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     Soil moisture anomaly:

Still  wet on this particular metric in an enormous area.  Getting even wetter in the next week.

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Rains compared to average for the last 7, 14, 30 and 60 days. 

Usually not updated for previous day until late the next day.

Note how incredibly wet it's been over the past 60 days over eastern 2/3rds of the country! It's going to get even wetter!

https://www.atmos.illinois.edu/~snodgrss/Ag_Wx.html

The top map is the Canadian ensemble average, the maps below are the individual members that make up the average

End of week 2....................0Z ensembles from Friday.  Looking mild.

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Each member is like the parent, Canadian model operational model.......with a slight tweek/variation in parameters. Since we know the equations to represent the physics of the atmosphere in the models are not perfect, its useful to vary some of the equations that are uncertain(can make a difference) to see if it effects the outcome and how.

The average of all these variations(ensembles) often yields a better tool for forecasting. It's always more consistent. The individual operational model, like each individual ensemble member can vary greatly from run to run.........and represent an extreme end of the spectrum at times. The ensemble average of all the members, because it averages the extremes.............from opposite ends of the spectrum.........changes much less from run to run.

360h GZ 500 forecast valid on Nov 17, 2018 00 UTC

Here are the 0Z GFS ensemble, individual solutions at 360 hours(2 weeks).

Colder than the Canadian ensembles with a couple of members still having northern stream energy aimed at the US on several member solutions but milder than yesterday for the late week 2 and beyond period.

Still significant disagreement and uncertainty.

Latest, updated graph/forecast for AO and NAO here, including an explanation of how to interpret them. 

For late week 2 on Friday, both the AO and NAO forecasts have a huge spread, so uncertainty reigns.

The average is close to zero and the latest guidance is leaning more positive too me with that providing a slight edge to the milder regime later this month..........low confidence.

Just like weather maps having less skill in the later periods, the same is the case with the AO/NAO.

https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/15793/

National Weather Service 6-10 day, 8-14 day outlooks.

Updated early this afternoon.

Temperature Probability

Precipitation Probability

the 8-14 day outlooks ArchivesAnalogsLines-Only FormatGIS Data

Temperature Probability

The Madden Julian Oscillator(MJO), which is in phase 8 right now,  will be strengthening a bit(very weak right now) and going thru phases 1-2-3, then be at phase 4 at the end of 2 weeks.

This would  cause an increase in chances for warm weather in the US, especially the Central part of the country.

However, the MJO is  a measurement in the southern stream. If the northern stream, dominated and the AO and NAO is much stronger than the southern stream, it doesn't matter  what phase the MJO is in because the MJO  signal will be diverted to the south(stay closer to the tropics).

The AO and NAO are near 0 at 2 weeks, which is neutral but models disagree tremendously.

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/MJO/mjoupdate.pdf

The 12z operational GFS is amazingly colder than the previous runs on HDD's for one reason.

In the previous runs, the southern stream was not interacting with the cold northern stream. 

On the older solutions, a strong piece of energy in the southern stream had been scheduled to hit the Southern Plains to S.Great Lakes in week 2 AFTER the cold northern streams Arctic air had receded back into Canada.

On the new solution, that Arctic chill stays in place a couple of extra days, so that when the southern stream energy arrives, it taps into it.......with temps cold enough for snow on the northwest side of the track and the circulation on the backside of the storm has loads of cold that plunges deeply south.

Maps below. 

  1.    Notice on the first 4 from the old solution, the blue cold in the bottom righthand corner has receded back into Canada.

2. Same maps on the next run, notice the blue cold anomalies(bottom right hand corner) getting pulled into the developing storm and getting wrapped deeply south!!!

gfs_namer_300_200_wnd_ht	gfs_namer_300_500_vort_ht
gfs_namer_300_1000_500_thick	gfs_namer_300_850_temp_ht

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gfs_namer_288_200_wnd_ht	gfs_namer_288_500_vort_ht
gfs_namer_288_1000_500_thick	gfs_namer_288_850_temp_ht

On Friday afternoon's the NWS releases a week 3-4 outlook. The one today was very mild across the country of the 2nd half of November. If this would verify, natural gas prices would plunge lower:

Temperature Probability

Precipitation Probability (Experimental)