joe lundberg

[piedmont]

"And while it will clearly turn colder across the South from Texas to Georgia into northern Florida, these areas won't drop much below normal, at least not on the front end of this.

But, as I said above, this is probably only the tip of the iceberg. I mentioned yesterday that the flow into the middle of this week is still fairly zonal. In the Breaking Weather News video I cut earlier today, I put the Canadian 500mb chart valid Tuesday evening and the European 500mb valid Wednesday morning on the screen for all to see. Yes, there's a ridge in the western third of the country, and a trough along the East Coast. And this cold will overwhelm the pattern and take control from Montana and eastern Wyoming eastward to the mid-Atlantic. I am on the bandwagon, now, and have no doubts. But what happens when the flow becomes more meridional, which I think it does, the FOLLOWING week? Why wouldn't it happen? This has been a pattern given to such extremes, so why wouldn't it repeat? This time, with all the arctic air in place, the penetration of the true "vodka cold" may be much deeper east of the Mississippi. While I'm not one to buy those orange juice futures, if I were a weather savvy citrus grower, I'd be concerned. It could be the coldest air mass we've seen over such a large area of the country since 1996."

hehehehehehehe

[wrkh99]

Joe b said houston may only have a high in the upper 20's in 10 days .

[Valkhorn]

Holy crap, then that'd put East MS back into having highs around 20... Fascinating.

It definately hasn't been that cold here since Feb. 1996

[FLguy]

lets also remember that the FEB 1996 extreme arctic outbreak was followed by an extreme warm-up.

the figures below illustrate the departure from nomral maximum and minimum temperatures for the FEB 1-5 1996 period:

Lowest recorded temperature (F):



Departure from normal lowest temperature (F):



table format:

http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/tech ... owtemp.txt

some of the more notable records include:

Minnesota--Tower (-60 F) on Feb 2, old record -59 F at Leech Lake Dam, Feb 8, 1899
Iowa--Elkader (-47 F) on Feb 3, tied record set at Washta, Jan 12, 1912
Illinois--Elizabeth (-35 F) on Feb 3, tied record set at Mt. Carroll, Jan 22, 1930
Rhode Island--Greene (-25 F) on Feb 5, old record -23 F at Kingston, Jan 11, 1942

following that...SOME locations in the ohio valley reached as high as 80F on FEB 23 !!!

[weatherlover427]

Looks like California escaped that cold spell for the most part. In fact it looks like we were the ONLY state to just about miss out on it. 55 sounds much better than -47! :o