Snow is inconvenient, challenging and dangerous, while the ice being seen from Mississippi to New Jersey is destructive, but the enduring cold is proving the most difficult and costly disaster, particularly in Texas. Power grids are failing thanks to a lack of winterization amid a cold snap that is breaking record books across the Plains (for example, Oklahoma City saw the coldest temperature recorded since before Oklahoma was even a state).

As you can see with the first image, the cold spell will alleviate over the course of the next week. With this particular situation with people freezing in their homes, it’s important to get a little more clarity. It’s nice to know that things will be more comfortable next week, but we still need to get to next week.

Cold weather, though not record breaking, will continue through the day tomorrow before things begin to really alleviate. Temperatures on Friday will remain cold, but temperatures in the afternoon from Oklahoma to Arkansas and southward will start to pop into the 40s, slowed somewhat by all the snow that has fallen.

Temperatures will hit the 50s around Abilene, and the 40s over the Metroplex on Saturday, with above freezing temperatures reaching into Iowa on Sunday. By early next week, 60s will be widespread, with a forecast in the mid 80s for Abilene by next Thursday.

Relief is on its way, and with spring coming up, it seems unlikely that we will revert back to another icy blast again. At least, not this winter.

If you live pretty much anywhere in the continental United States, the story leading the local news probably revolves around the hellish winter conditions in your area. What you might not fully appreciate is that it’s rough everywhere in the country, save, perhaps, for the desert Southwest, though even there, there are some winter weather advisories around the 4 Corners.

In the Pacific Northwest, a large system brought significant snowfall not only to the Cascades, but closer to the coast, where Seattle was even placed in the grips of heavy wet snow before things could finally turn to rain yesterday. The storm has lost a lot of it’s organizational structure at the surface, but it continues to bring snow to the mountains of the northern and central Rockies.

Eventually, this system will be the feature praised for breaking the vicious cold snap that has been keeping everyone indoors and by the fire across the Plains. Record breaking cold has come to the far northern Plains, but also subzero temperatures are sinking as far south as Oklahoma. A wind chill advisory was issued for the Houston for the first time ever.

If you are in Houston, however, the cold is only part of the problem. East Texas remains in a winter storm warning, and are also seeing temperatures much colder than they are accustomed to, including parts of the state that are 50-60 degrees colder than normal. Snow and freezing rain blasted the state this weekend, with places as far south as Austin receiving half a foot of snow, and Brownsville and Harlingen seeing a dusting of snow.

A huge part of the issue, however, is the burden on energy in Texas. There are infrastructural issues with preserving power systems in the cold, there are also functional problems. Texas doesn’t rely on natural gas for heat like a lot of places in the north, with many houses not even having furnaces. As a result, the electrical grid is overwhelmed by the widespread use of space heaters, and millions of Texans are out of power.

Now, the system, as you might be able to discern from the warnings at the top of the page, is heading to the northeast, where it will be enhanced by the Great Lakes from Indiana to New England, but where the storm will really be dangerous is on the southern and eastern flank, from the Tennessee Valley to southern New England, where a significant ice storm is expected through the next 24-36 hours. In fact, the threat for freezing rain has started on the Gulf Coast last night, and continues to the north today.

The cold, snowy weather will not sweep into the southeastern United States, but the clashing of the record cold air mass with the typically temperate weather of the southeast will bring about a threat for severe weather.

There is even a high risk for tornadoes west of Tallahassee, with some concern for large, destructive tornadoes.

Winter is kicking our butt right now, America. Hopefully, we will get out of it by the end of the month.

A lot of the country has been gripped by chilly weather for several days, nearly since a massive storm blanketed the east coast at the beginning of the month. This is no ordinary cold snap though. It’s a full blown cold wave.

Even at 8-14 days, the Climate Prediction Center believes that the cold will continue for most of the country.

Must be nice to be in Florida, huh?

A strong, broad jet trough will remain in place, recycling with more cold air with perturbations rolling in from Canada. Through the middle of this week, the coldest air will sink from its position in the northern Plains south to Texas. Early next week, expect even colder air to arrive in the Upper Midwest, where it isn’t out of the question that -30 could be detected on the outskirts of Minneapolis.

The cold isn’t expected to finally break until mid week next week. Of course, that is more than 10 days into the future, and model guidance can be a little specious. Plan on keeping those long johns available just in case.

I know, I know, you think Adam Claibon should be the forecaster of the month, but he appeared on this site in February, not January. Tell you what though, since he did appear on THIS site, it’s only right that Victoria-Weather IS the forecaster of the month. I mean, it took more than just a guest appearance, we actually were near the top on every forecast that was put out in the first month of the year. Congrats, us!

Outlet	Forecast Wins
The Weather Channel	1
Victoria-Weather	1
Accuweather	1
WeatherNation
Weatherbug
National Weather Service
Forecast.io

There is fairly nasty system moving through the middle of the country tonight, bringing a lot of snow to the southern Great Lakes and some rain and thunderstorms to the Tennessee Valley. While that’s a big deal for people currently caught in the storm, it will become a bigger news storm tomorrow and on Monday.

The feature is very well organized right now, but as it approaches the Appalachians, the primary surface low will stall over Ohio, with the primary thrust of moisture shifting offshore through early Monday morning. While snow will begin Sunday, the really pivotal point in the life cycle of this storm, and the story this feature will tell will come on Monday morning.

The leading batch of moisture will start to reorganize in the open waters of the Gulf Stream. Most guidance suspects that the center of circulation will organize south of the eastern end of Long Island. This will mean a boatload of heavy wet snow for southern New England.

That is the common consensus for Monday evening. Heavy snow falling over the entirety of southern New England, except over Cape Cod, where heavy rain is likely. One prominent model, however, is changing things up just a little bit. It organizes this redeveloping low off the coast of southern New Jersey. It’s just far enough west that a little bit warmer air aloft infiltrates, and then we get this:

Because most of the models agree on what will happen, the forecast from the National Weather Service calls for a likely total of 11″ in New York City, with a maximum of 12″. There aren’t many things that can make this storm snow more than what appears likely right now. The uncertainty lies in that Euro, which brings in just enough warm air to reduce the potential snow down to 4″.

We’ll know a lot more by Monday morning, but it looks like a snowy start to the week and month for the Mid-Atlantic.

As I’ve noted before, every forecast outlet pulls their model data from the same source material. The GFS and the NAM are the big models in the US, but the European, UK and Canadian model provide coverage, along with a slew of short range models, and even some created in house for smaller time frames and smaller geographies.

Larger weather companies have created their own methodology for extracting data from the models, and applying formulas to produce forecasts for a broader geographic region without necessarily requiring human involvement at every point in the country. These are called “blends” because they take bits of particular models and create their output.

Recently, the National Weather Service has done away with their former MOS (Model Output Statistics) page, which allowed users to see the raw text output from the GFS and NAM for hundreds of sites across the country, instead replacing it with a page offering the National Blend of Models (NBM) which is all the text forecasts after they have been processed by the National Weather Service using their blending formula (but before they have been processed by local meteorologists and placed on the NWS site).

Since the GFS and NAM are still available for meteorologists, this is really a lift for weather persons without the backing for a company to pay for a whole lot of model data, as it suggests the trends of all the guidance, and not just that which is available for free to the American masses.

It may not lead to better forecasts from everyone, but it definitely sweeps the curtain aside for more curious eyes.

All eyes will be on the US Capitol on Wednesday, not only in the United States, but across he world. Given the events at the capital on January 6th (and indeed, the tenor of the nation and world politics in recent years) there will be special attention given to an event that usually engenders a lot of headlines in normal times.

If the weather is discussed during those headlines, it will be to discuss the chill in the air during the ceremony. Temperatures in the morning will be hovering at or just below freezing, meaning that anyone around the capital before the ceremony commences better bundle up.

Mostly sunny skies and temperatures in the mid to upper 30s should be in the offing when Kamala Harris, followed by Joe Biden are sworn into their new roles atop the United States government.

There will be a bit of northwest flow thanks to an inverted trough trailing low pressure in the Canadian Maritimes. This may lead to a bit of briskness, but any associated precipitation will remain in the Appalachians west of D.C. Of all the many things that could happen on Wednesday, weather is not something that should raise too many concerns.

Who could have predicted all that happened in 2020? If anyone could have predicted it, I’m sure a lot of people would have chosen to skip it. A dark December ended brightly, at least in terms of plaudits for The Weather Channel and Accuweather, who tied atop of the leaderboard for forecasters of the month.

It didn’t help put them over the top for forecaster of the year, however. That prize belonged to…. us! Victoria-Weather was he most consistent throughout the year, and ended up with the best scores on aggregate (TWC and AW were 2 and 3, respectively) for the year. Interestingly, The Weather Channel was very good when they were good, but had some stinkers mixed in. They had he most individual forecast wins for 2020, while Accuweather was never at the paramount, but never really had major rough streaks, and are at the bottom of this table.

Outlet	Forecast Wins
The Weather Channel	13
Victoria-Weather	11.41
WeatherNation	7.08
Weatherbug	6.82
Accuweather	5.58
National Weather Service	4.91
Forecast.io	4.16

Victoria-Weather was consistent, and had moments of brilliance as well. Just the way we want it. To 2021, hopefully it goes better than 2020.

As is often the cast with mid-winter systems, a deep upper level trough will feature two iterations. The first will be a fast moving area of low pressure moving through the upper Midwest with a burst of snow in the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes. The second will emerge as the base of the upper trough pivots further south into warmer air, a stronger feature will develop.

In this case, the deep, secondary low will really emerge over east Texas. Tightly wound and with the clash of air masses one needs to generate some convection.

The storm will quickly shift to the northeast and get more organized as it does so, introducing a threat for severe weather in the Lower Mississippi Valley as it does so.

Here is the risk for severe weather on New Years Day, or Day 4 in the SPC parlance.

If there is one good thing about the timing of these storms, it is that their intensity will require day time heating, and overnight severe weather is not expected. Still, as the storm continues to lift to the north-northeast, severe weather is already on the agenda for January 2nd as well.

The back end of the storm isn’t going to be nearly as moisture rich as the warm sector, in good spring fashion, but there will still be snow associated with the feature, particularly through the Great Lakes.

2020 is finally almost over, but 2021 really wants to give us it’s best shot right out of the gate.

I’m going to be pretty quick with the forecaster of the month: It was WeatherNation. They don’t get many titles so it’s too bad we don’t get to spend too much time discussing it. Residents of the mid Atlantic, particularly in downstate New York might be particularly miffed that we don’t get a chance to really dive into WeatherNation’s month.

Starting early tomorrow afternoon, a mix of rain and snow, depending on how near the coast you live, will start in Long Island and southern New York (sooner in the DC and Philadelphia areas) and intensify into the evening, until we can look at something like this after sunset through midnight.

Precipitation from the Big Apple northward is likely to be snow, while Long Island may see quite a bit of mixed snow, sleet and rain. Where it is all snow, including in New York, over a foot of accumulation is in the forecast.

Long Island doesn’t necessarily get the best of the weather however. In addition to whatever sloppy accumulations they get in Long Island, residents of the area can also look forward to wind gusts approaching 50mph. What’s worse? That’s a matter of personal opinion.

It will still be over a week, but this gives the mid-Atlantic a good shot at a White Christmas.