Happy Thanksgiving........

A little early to wish Happy Thanksgiving but I will be on the road tonight, along with the rest of the people who own cars, heading to my in-laws for Thanksgiving. This Thanksgiving will mark the turn in the weather pattern for the upcoming winter I believe.

Two nicest days will be today and tomorrow ahead of the next storm system. Temps will hit the 50's in the valley's.  Tomorrow night we get the tail end of a storm hitting the Pacific NW. Wouldn't expect more than some light snow showers and a dusting into Friday. Big change will be the Northerly flow and cold air behind the front. Temps will only be in the 30's on the mountain through the weekend.  Ridge will start to rebuild off the coast over the weekend and to start next week we should stay cool with a Northeasterly flow due to cold air dropping into the country to our East.

Models are really struggling this week with the change coming in the pattern. Starting next week and also starting December, the pattern is going to want to start taking on El Nino characteristics. The ridge off the coast is going to try and shift Northward and build in over Western Canada. Meanwhile a much weakened MJO is finally where we want it to be in order to enhance the jetstream across the Pacific. There will be strong storms heading towards Western Canada all week. What we need to happen is for a split to form in the jetstream and send the Southern branch under the ridge into CA. This is not showing up yet consistently on the models. What is showing up is the ridge in Western Canada pushing the storms under the ridge into the Pacific NW and Northern CA by the end of next week, which would bring snow to our area.

This pattern may take a couple of weeks to really develop, but I think once it does we will have the hose turned on. By the middle of December we could be seeing excessive amounts of snow. Mean while the massive amounts of cold pouring into the rest of the country over the next couple of weeks should keep a cool flow into our area, hopefully keeping the snow already on the ground from melting all away.

Will post again on Friday. Stay tuned because the forecast could turn quickly. If the jetstream splits we could get a storm within a few days starting next week. BA