Delay Of Game On Mother Nature. The Penalty Will Be Enforced Next Week.

I should have posted this when the models showed snow 7 to 8 days out and I wrote it was highly unlikely to verify.

Now the models are having a horrible time deciding when the arctic air will move into the state. It appeared Saturday night, then Monday, now Tuesday. Delay, delay, delay.

Look at the evolution of thee GFS.

Early run of the GFS on Feb 3rd had fontal passage around noon Monday Feb 8th

The late run on the 3rd delayed it until Monday evening around 9PM

Now the GFS has it arriving around 3PM Tuesday February 9th

The pattern is cold! There's a tremendous amount of cold, arctic air moving into Canada just waiting to dive south. Everything screams this is coming south as the upper air pattern evolves to significant ridging over the Pacific and a piece of the Polar Vortex near the Canadian border. The models always have a terrible time handling these situations because it's difficult for the models to capture low level, dense air which is only a few thousand feet deep and sometimes even more shallow.

Maybe it's best to wait for better sampling by the upper air network to determine the time of arrival. It has been my experience these air masses arrive stronger and faster than models predict. And yes, the models are worse now than ever, IMO. Why? I don't know.

So what do I think? I think the cold is coming. Timing and extent will just have to be determined with more data. My gut says it's coming though and it's going to be the coldest air so far this winter. Maybe I'm just a dog chasing my tail. Treat?!