There is a huge, multiphase storm moving across the country. Essentially, only areas from the Mid Atlantic to Florida are going to be spared. There will be blizzard conditions in the north, severe storms through the middle of the country, and even snow squalls in the 4 Corners. It is brutal, and it’s continuing to go down hill. I am telling you this so you can look to the National Weather Service, who had the best start to the forecasting year, and are your January forecasters of the month.

Areas of low pressure rotate counter-clockwise, dragging air around them in such a pattern. When all things are equal, in the Northern Hemisphere, warm air rises from the south on the eastern flank of a low, and cold air sinks south on the western flank. There are some undulations, notably with topography and the presence of large bodies of water that modify this scenario in some locations, but more or less, that is how it works.

The most nefarious of our weather comes as the cold air tries to intersect with that warm air, all while the atmosphere is trying to rotate. There are updrafts caused by the cold digging in, latent buoyancy of the warmer air, and the twistiness of the wind pattern. This can mean rain, thunderstorms or even heavy snow. This is why the northern Plains can get wicked blizzards, and the Southern Plains and increasingly the lower Mississippi Valley are prone to strong thunderstorms and tornadoes.

We’ve already seen a busy start to February, with severe weather afflicting the Lower Mississippi Valley, and copious snows falling from Kansas to Iowa, though the southern Great Lakes. Temperatures, as you might imagine, have been fairly warm in the eastern US, with an unusual chill out west. Before these past few days, the cold was aided in part by Pacific systems coming ashore, bringing clouds and rain. Now, it’s simply a colder air mass.

Knowing that it is the clash in air mass that fuels stronger weather, and particularly when the clash is between western cold and southeastern warmth, the long term out look suggests action to come.

Whether in response to persistent lee troughing in the High Plains, or a result of a static jet pattern, this temperature trend for the end of the month and beginning of March indicates some busy times, both for tornado chasers centered in the middle of the country, and snow plows in the Upper Mississippi Valley.

In the Upper Midwest, the story of the winter has been the snow. Several rounds of accumulating snow have buffeted the Twin Cities, but temperatures have always rebounded, because the responsible storms are bringing moisture from the Gulf, rather than cold air from the north. That is changing with a series of Clippers that moved through last weekend.

Temperatures in Minnesota ahead of the cool down were in the 30s and seasonably pleasant, but they are going downhill, and the low temperatures will reach all the way to Chicago and the western Great Lakes by Tuesday morning. This was the forecast for Tuesday morning in the Upper Midwest.

That cold has stuck around, and while it was chilly Tuesday, a reinforcing shot of the cold air came this morning, and it was as cold as -35 in International Falls, Minnesota. Unlike the initial rounds, this cold air is pressing further east, and while the Twin Cities and Minnesota are warming this weekend, it’s going to be dangerously cold in New England.

And unlike the cold in the Upper Midwest, there is a deep area of low pressure northeast of the Canadian Maritimes, bringing a brisk northeast wind, not only reinforcing the cold air, but introducing significant wind chill. Boston could see a wind chill of -30 in the early hours.

Great news, though. While this cold, the coldest shot of the winter in a lot of places, and in parts of New England the coldest in a decade, is brutal, it’s reign is at an end. Next week is forecast to be much warmer than normal for many locations in the chill this week.

It is the beginning of the year, and already we have had our first notable severe weather outbreak. With the strong storms pounding the west, it was only a matter of time before the cold air wrought havoc when making contact with the more sultry air east of the Rockies.

Tornadoes left a path of damage in Alabama and Georgia over the weekend, including a tornado that led to the deaths of at least 6 west of Montgomery. The strong areas of low pressure have drawn unstable air as north as Iowa, where the first January tornado was reported there since 1986. Now, a strong storm is expected to leave a foot of snow in the northern High Plains.

It will be the tornado that struck Selma, Alabama that will be remembered the most out of this town, striking a town so closely associated with the Civil Rights Movement on the weekend that celebrates one its greatest champions, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The tornado went through the heart of the city, just north of the down town area and the Edmund Pettus Bridge, damaging homes, churches and businesses throughout the city. StormChasingVideo provides a look at the city and nearby Autauga in the aftermath of the tornado.

As long as cold air resides in the west, feeding into much warmer air east of the Rockies, there will be a threat that storm systems could amplify quickly and dangerously. The snow storm in the Dakotas and Nebraska today will ultimately lead to an additional threat for severe weather in the Mississippi Valley later the is week. The long term outlook, for a cold wet west indicates an active winter in the south as well.

Strictly speaking, this is our first forecast of 2023! Finally! We’re going to cover a road trip through the Southeast, which will cover merely one day, but it will be a full 8+hour day that entails 522 miles. We will pace ourselves at about 63mph, slowed by some back roads and certainly by Atlanta.

It’s pretty quiet in the southeastern US right now, and that might lead intended travelers to think they have a good shot at getting quickly out of town and on the road. Not so fast. Surface low pressure in the Panhandle region will shift into the Lower Mississippi Valley overnight and really absorb a lot of the moisture. What is a non story tonight will quickly become active, bringing rain to Morristown by lunch time. The threat for wet weather will start on the drive, likely northwest of Atlanta, and between Marietta and Calhoun, the brunt of the cold front will arrive, with thunderstorms and wind likely. North of the boundary, it will be cooler, but still windy and a little rainy. This can get dicey in the undulations of eastern Tennessee, so be careful northeast from Chattanooga on slick roads. After a long, stormy day… Morristown!

There are phrases that have been around the meteorological lexicon for years, and then get adopted into the media, and become part of what many find to be a sensationalized parlance. The polar vortex stands out to me, as does the bomb cyclone. These are real, definable things that suddenly take on a more ominous tone because they are uttered on the news regularly.

Right now, we are hearing about the “Atmospheric River”. Allow me to show you what that result of the atmospheric river is on satellite. It’s unusual, I think, to look at satellite over the north Pacific, because it isn’t somewhere we usually look at, and the perspective is a tad wonky, but here it is.

And that, boxed in red, is an area of low pressure, showing off the typical comma shaped cold front with a little warm front evidenced as angling towards San Francisco Bay. It’s not particularly unusual, but the discussion surrounding this feature is probably amplified by the persistent drought, which has rendered rainmakers rare over the last several years, and ongoing concerns over climate change flaring anxiety over every weather phenomenon.

The jet, in response to oceanic circulations, tends to rise and form a ridge at the California Coast, leading to the semi permanent Gulf of Alaska low (which feeds moisture into British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest with regularity) and a semi permanent area of surface high pressure west of the Baja Peninsula. In the winter, the jet is more apt to dig a little bit further south, because the cold California coastal waters don’t cause the atmosphere to differ as extensively as happens in the summer, and that coastal ridge can break down.

So the jet sinks south, and a regular old area of low pressure moves into California. It is coming off the ocean, so it will be laden with moisture, and it is interacting with the terrain, so it will dump a lot of precipitation, especially in the Sierras. This will do a lot of work in refilling dried reservoirs as the snow melts in the spring, and is how California usually maintains a sustainable quality of life. The southern source of the jet has led, in the past, to some “atmospheric rivers” to be dubbed “the Pineapple Express”.

All they are, really, is a more southerly jet that brings consequential weather to the West Coast. he phenomenon isn’t strange, but the location is, made a little bit more unusual by the recent climatology.

We’ve made it through 2022, and are looking forward to 2023. The end of the year saw The Weather Channel claim the final prize, though the newly retired Forecast.io was close behind. The Forecast.io site is already shuttered, and there are widespread lamentations over the DarkSky app. After the few years we’ve used that site as one our verification comparables, I can confirm that it was one of the easiest to use, and most readable, accessible outputs. On the other hand, it was consistently the least accurate, proving the continued value of meteorologists inserting their input in the process. In fact, despite Forecast.io’s strong end, it was the worst outlet of the year, and it wasn’t close. Alternately, the National Weather Service was abominable in December, but were the top forecast of the year. They had a steady hand throughout the season, racking up only the third most individual forecast wins of the year, but still won the year’s title. It was made closer by their sloppy end, but the first 11 months were so good, it didn’t matter. Congrats to the Weather Service on their year, and a Happy 2023 to everyone!

Outlet	Forecast Wins (year)
Victoria-Weather	8.82
Weatherbug	8.33
Accuweather	8.32
National Weather Service	7.66
The Weather Channel	7.33
WeatherNation	5.33
Forecast.io	5.16

My parents live part of the year in south Florida, due east of Fort Myers Beach, which was among the hardest hit areas by Hurricane Ian this September, along with Sanibel Island. Inland, in places like Estero, Bonita Springs and the south side of Fort Myers, the lack of coastline prevented the storm surge and flooding that proved so catastrophic to Fort Myers Beach, wiping the beloved Time Square shopping area off the map.

Southwest Florida had a very good run, avoiding hurricanes for a very long time. That was true until 2017, actually, when, after battering the Caribbean and the Florida Keys, Hurricane Irma made landfall at Marco Island, and moved through the Peninsula from south to north. Ian made landfall further to the north, and was more specifically aimed at the Fort Myers area.

There was a grove of palm trees that I particularly admired the first time I was down there, about 10 years ago. 3 royal palms stood near the pin of one of the short holes of the course, and were a photogenic and stately landmark at the facility. I took a picture and had it as my phone background for a while.

Trust me, they were stately. This is a screen shot of a years old picture, and don’t do them justice. 5 years after this picture was taken, Irma came to pass. Irma decimated the foliage of Estero. The tree cover was significantly less around the facility, and what trees weren’t taken down were defoliated. Cypresses were laid bare, and stood out the most. The palms that weren’t felled stood proud. Of that trio, that was the case.

Only one of the palms survived Irma, and the tall palm in the trees behind the stand, for example, was also lost. But this pine stood as a stately welcome and a great object to aim at from the tee box.

Ian was a different beast. The damage with Ian produced more structural damage. My parents’ building was ok, though the carport was destroyed. Throughout the town, there are still tarps on roofs. Even buildings adjacent to their facility had unrepaired roof damage. The most noticeable damage to a visitor was in the signs for various venues. There was a Waffle Us and a Chi i around town, with letters gone and yet unrepaired. Still more signs were completely decimated, living only a ring where a corporate brand had once been.

That remaining palm though, stood tall. He definitely looks worse for wear, and is a stoic reminder of what Irma and Ian have wrought on the region.

A massive feature moving through the center of the country, the second this month, is bringing blizzard conditions to the Northern Plains, but it will be remembered for quite some time for the path of destruction it is weaving across the southern US.

The storms started yesterday, with tornadoes striking the Dallas-Fort Worth metro, including causing 5 injuries at a Sam’s Club and mall in Grapevine.

Check out some of the photos of damage from storms around the DFW area earlier this morning. The Grapevine, TX mall sustained extensive damage and an apparent tornado in Decatur sent wood through the door of a pickup truck! pic.twitter.com/NOKYB8cH3a

— WeatherNation (@WeatherNation) December 13, 2022

There were even more tragic consequences south of Shreveport, where tornadoes claimed the lives of two near Keachi as the tornado swept through some mobile homes. There was another prominent cluster of tornado reports between Monroe, Louisiana and Vicksburg, Mississippi. Fortunately, only one injury was reported there.

The storm carried on today, and started early. Storms fired early, and slightly to the southeast of Tuesday’s storm activity. Storms were seen in Mississippi through much of the day, before tornadoes struck throughout the city of New Orleans. Fortunately, none appear to have been major tornadoes, but they struck impoverished, poorly soiled and urban areas, so damage has been great.

Reports specifically have come out of Gretna and the Algiers and Arabi neighborhoods of New Orleans. Arabi was clipped by a tornado earlier this year, doubling down on bad luck for New Orleans. A tornado watch and the threat thereof continue this evening in the Florida Panhandle and south Georgia. Tornadoes were also noted northeast of Apalachicola today.

An impressive jet trough digging into the middle of the country is urging the helicity necessary to produce these tornadoes, and sustain them over the course of several days. In addition, the depth of this trough is allowing the cold air necessary to clash with the marine air as far south as New Orleans. The base of the trough is going to continue to shift to the east, taking with it the threat of continued severe weather, aside from some early straight line winds in north Florida tomorrow.

We are a couple of days from the end of the month, but with a handful of forecasts coming up, and a looming threat of severe weather coming tomorrow, I thought we might as well grab some time now to reward the top forecaster from the past month. The top spot this month belonged to the fine folks at the National Weather Service, who took the prize, thanks to good old fashioned consistency.