Thursday Evening Weather Update - SPRING OUTLOOK SPECIAL

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Updated: 0150z/21:50/09:50PM 

--------------------------2015 SPRING OUTLOOK------------------

Disclaimer: This is Dillon and my first time doing an outlook like this. So bear with us if it is not perfect. Read for the details though and enjoy it smile emoticon

As we get into the heart of spring, and continue on towards summer, please keep in mind that we just went through the second coldest, and one of the snowiest winters on record. These type of sever long term events like to stay for a while, and generally take a long time to leave.

One of the big misconceptions in this world I feel of the general public is that the weather consists of just these storms that move in and out. And that the fronts associated with them govern the temperatures and weather in between... Sadly...this is not the case. There are MILLIONS of other things governing our atmosphere and everyday sensible weather. The biggest thing(s) are the oceans and Sun.

The oceans go through cycles, warm and cold, and their teleconnections and oscillations also go through cycles. Many of these cycles are over 30 years long..some over 60 years. The sun's cycles can sometimes be over 200 years!

Within these big cycles we have smaller cycles, like El Nino's and La Nina's which last typically on average 18 months..sometimes longer and sometimes shorter. Within even that we have the MJO (Madden Julian Oscillation) which is a shorter seasonal variation in the pacific tropics around the dateline that has an effect on our sensible weather, it usually lasts 30-60 days sometimes up to 90 days.

Why am I telling you all of this? It does not help you with knowing the Spring forecast....But, Dillon and I feel it is important, because it helps you understand that there is so much going into every rain drop that falls and every hour of sunshine, fog, snow, etc. that you see. We as humans do not get to see many of these larger pattern shifts, because they are simply too long. Maybe we see 2 or 3 Oscillation switches, 1 major ocean pattern shift, if we are lucky. Because of this, we believe what we see. Unfortunately in the last 30 years we have been in, for the most part the warm cycles of these patterns. This has led the world to believe that the earth will warm an obscene amount in the next 50 years, and that many other things to ruin our planet will happen. Maybe this is true for pollution. Maybe this is true to a certain extent. For the simple and short answer though, for the earth to warm as much as they say it will, the physics of our atmosphere would have to change. We do not see that happening at all anytime soon. So...enough digressing, lets get on to the actual spring forecast.

At the moment we are in a weak/modoki El Nino. Now, there are hints that this could become a stronger El Nino as the year progresses, but for now we will not worry about this. Whats important is that for our spring, the El Nino will not "Directly" affect us. Instead, we will likely see above normal precipitation and temperatures along the Gulf Coast. The pattern during the winter, which was largely governed by warm water off the West coast, Baha and Gulf of Alaska. This set up a -EPO and +PNA for much of the winter, and pumped up a Ridge in the West (Hence the warm and dry weather in the west) and a Trough in the east. This allowed record breaking cold to penetrate deep into the eastern portions of the country, and warm air to filtrate through the west. 

What we will begin to see this spring is the Trough that has been prominent in the East to retrograde itself west, and and the ridge in the West to retrograde East. This is also due to the normal changing position of the Jet to its normal Late spring summer position.

That being said, the MJO forecast is not looking promising for SUSTAINED warmth of above average temperatures. What we see is it moving into regions 1,2,3. If you see the pictures, you will see what I mean. The Euro is a bit more bullish then the GFS, but essentially what is happening is the models wanna go back and forth between warm and cold periods...a few days warm a few days cold, dropping troughs every so often and letting High pressure build blocking the jet and pushing Arctic Air south. Based on this assumption of it continuing through April and into the better part of May and maybe beginning of June.

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Based on this, our temperatures will look like:

-For the rest of April and likely into May, if not beginning of June, temperatures sticking at or BELOW average (not much) with periodic spikes of above average temperatures (again, not MUCH). Basically back and forth between warm above average temps and late season cold shots.

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Precipitation wise this is what we are thinking:

- We should stay fairly dry, not overly wet but not bone dry. Climate maps and models suggesting on average 0 to -1.5" below average for the running monthly mean. That being said, the sensible weather models are hinting at some impressive precipitation amounts over the next 10 even 20 days..its all relative, and frankly overall it should stay around average once everything sorts itself out. As we get into the summer, June/July things will start to get wetter We think, and most likely we will end up with a summer like last year...but that is for the summer outlook wink emoticon

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Ok, I think this is about as detailed as you guys want us to get for now....dont wanna bore you to death! If you have any questions please Private m

essage us, email us...etc. Thanks!