Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!! How Long does the Cold Last now?!?

[Gothpunk-IL-WX]

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. It's cold at last, but I've been hearing of a moderating trend, but I'm not seeing it to the extent there forecasting according to the models. The GFS at best warms up to close to 40 degrees for one day in St. Louis, but not the middle and lower 40s for a week that the weather channel and accuweather.com are saying. Also there's alot more snow chances coming around the bend if you believe the GFS and GEM models past day 8. Anybody have any Idea what will happen now? If so please place your info and thinking here.

[sertorius]

I am far from an expert-I mean incredibly far but I'll give it a shot!!

1. The models are having a terrible time with htis pattern-even the steady euro is going back and forth a little bit. I think the cold air will last longer than the modles show and this is my reason: The last two arctice air masses were much shallower than this one-the models had these two scoured out in two days-well, I've been above freezing for about 30 hours over the past 10 days-the models (accept the eta) busted pretty bad on the last two-since this one is deeper and since there is such a good snow pack (I even still have half my yard iced up) any cold shot will be stronger than anticipated by the models.

2. I am on the far western side of the developing eastern trough so areas say Columbia, MO. east will have abtter chance of snow/rain etc. than Kansas City and points west. However, this is in general and doesn't mean we (Kansas City) won't see some snow and cold shots in the next 10 days to two weeks. You in St. louis however are in a much better position and this climatology wise makes sense as you average 8-10 more inches of snow than I do.

3. In summary: it doesn't appear that we will go to the total zonal flow that was depicted 2-3 days ago-even the euor on the 500 chart shows us cooler and on the back side of the trough and much lower hts. 10 days out than it had 2 days ago. I think the next week to 10 days will at least be interesting and not like December was-there is still cold air in Canada and it looks to reload over the next couple of weeks so even Feb. should offer some chances. If we could get the sub tropical jet to kick something up, I could be even in better shape-as of now, you are in a better over all position but I can still see some interesting weather in this pattern and should stay normal (maybe a few days above) to just below for the next 10-12 days. We shall see-but I would not be surprised to see the models flip flopping alot in the next 48-72 hours.