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2018 Winter Weather Thread


Hate

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We seem to have no significant snow in the 10 day, but it's oddly stable cold temps.  Usually, the end of February is when things start melting, and there's some big fuck-off snow storm in early March, but the outlook is just kinda cold (lows around 10, highs around 25) for the time of year.

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2 minutes ago, irishtexan said:

Frost on the ground when I left the house this morning. 90 degrees the day after tomorrow. One lonely indian paintbrush has bloomed in a field by my son's school. Mother Nature be confusing. 

Sounds like our -35 to 45 swing a couple weeks ago.  But, you know, capable of sustaining life.

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We seem to have no significant snow in the 10 day, but it's oddly stable cold temps.  Usually, the end of February is when things start melting, and there's some big fuck-off snow storm in early March, but the outlook is just kinda cold (lows around 10, highs around 25) for the time of year.
My arms are jello from snow blowing and ive thrown in the towel on cleaning my driveway completely unless we get hit again
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Going to visit friends next weekend (22nd) in Seattle, and they currently have no power due to Winter storm Whoseits, and the havoc it has/is wreaking up in the PNW. Looking at the 10-day doesn't give me lots of confidence about much changing, but I am also very unfamiliar with the weather up there. Thoughts? Obviously if they still don't have power by then, we will get a hotel. Have a rental car right now, but its unlikely its AWD, do I need to request one with? My wife is already freaking out about how many bags she's gonna have to check with winter clothes. 

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It's about 90 outside, and about 80 inside my office which is bullshit.  My neighbors are asking who wants to get together for drinks in the cul-de-sac but I think it's gonna be too hot actually.  I'm heading out at 4:00p to a little watering hole that's dark, A/C-blastin', and drinks hurt your molars they're so cold.  We need a proper Spring this year of all years in Austin.  It's bad enough we have to skip Autumn.

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This front came down a bit more than expected, so temps are even lower than forecast.  However, the front is likely going to move back north of us by tonight (there's actually a fairly complex series of things fighting for dominance right now, making forecasts a bit tougher temp wise), so those 40's are here today, not Monday.  However, the next few days' temps have moderated slightly.. not cold but cool - tomorrow will get to 70° in many areas, then another mild cool front (about the third of 3 in 3 days) will take temps down slightly below normal (into the 50's) most of the workweek before warming back up into the 70's again by next weekend.

tl;dr:  a bit cooler than normal in general the upcoming week, milder to close out the workweek.  Cloudy most of the week.**

** we have been sitting under a very typical El Niño Southern Jet the past month, a "river" of clouds and moisture, which has kept the sun away, and kept us generally moderate (not too cool, not too hot, yeah, okay, yesterday was an exception).  This thing occasionally gets bumped out (like yesterday) but returns right back.   It'll be back by tonight.

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56 minutes ago, Hate said:

It seems like we’ve been under that sub tropical jet for 6 months. I don’t remember the last time we’ve had a couple of cloudless days in a row. I miss the sun.

Spency said the other day on KXAN Austin went from January 27th to February 12th without having sun during the afternoon hours.  

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Well, CPC earlier this week "confirmed" that an El Niño is here now.  However it was "light predicted" (i.e. "is possible" last fall, so it's not a surprise.  And the more active and more-powerful-when-active Subtropical Jet is pretty clearly in existence when it's an E.N. year (the Subtropical Jet is always there but in non E.N. years, is less powerful and usually stays a little farther south, towards the equator).  Anyway, this Subtropical Jet brings clouds and varying degrees of precip (can vary widely) along the Southern U.S. for a few months.  This results in a "cooler" winter not so much because colder air comes down - in fact it's sort of the opposite (more in a sec on that) - but rather more cloud cover = slightly less cooler daytime highs... that's where the "cooler" comes from.

in fact, an active Subtropical Jet can keep Arctic fronts from plunging down to us to a degree, and this year is a good example.  We've had cool, but not really frigid weather for the most part.  Temps have stayed relatively above polar (for us) levels.  In fact, this very weekend we're seeing how this happens.  A pretty cold air mass has barreled down from Canada (yesterday while we were at about 85°, it was about 29° in OKC!) but the powerful Subtropical Jet blew most of it east, and although it did get colder today than expected, the Subtropical Jet is quickly eroding this cold mass (warm air is less dense and is lighter than cold air, so it can't "plow underneath" like a sharp cold front, but rather erodes and ebbs from above, like sandpaper).  By tonight it'll be gone and tomorrow will be warmer.  The next few days will be this tug of war between cold fronts and the warm Subtropical Jet which will act on it quickly and powerfully.  This is why most of our "cold snaps" this winter rarely have been longer than a day, and just aren't lasting too long.

And we're about in the earth's orbit where the season is definitely going to change - longer, more direct sunlight on the N. Hemisphere will induce changes to work toward spring.  We're probably around the corner more or less - certainly a cold front can come in and even a polar icing type thing (about 3 of the last 4 worst "winter storms" happened after Feb. 15 here).  But winter almost over.

El Niño is expected to be around through May or so.  Does it mean more rain?  Not necessarily but it can keep temps down which will come in handy for at least the early part of the summer.

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