Hey folks! We wanted to do a quick re-cap of the final, observed snowfall from this last event. Touching briefly on the pattern ahead and when we think the pattern will support more cold/snow risks. If we don’t hear from you from now into Christmas, Merry Christmas from all of us here at BAM…we are thankful for you!
Total observed snowfall from this last 2-day event…a widespread swath of 3-6″+ along and south of the I-70 corridor:
Here was our final 2-day forecast. The second wave ended up being a bit more scattered, lighter in nature vs the first wave as we battled more dry air in the snow-growth zone in the atmosphere…but all-in-all…we felt we had a good handle on this system (despite the model chaos):
We anticipate extremely quiet weather pretty much now through Christmas Eve, as seen by the latest European model total precipitation forecast:
Our latest week 2 forecast has transitioned to quite warm leading into Christmas towards New Years as the MJO (Madden Julian Oscillation – measure of upward motion and storm activity along the Equator – has 8 different phases from west to east) pushes into the warmer phases 6 and 7:
Latest CFS (American long-range model) weekly, weeks 3/4 forecast, is quite cold through the first half of January. We are siding with this solution as we anticipate the MJO to move into the colder phases of 8, 1 and 2 over the Midwest:
In our top analog years for January right now, here is a look at the snowfall vs normal in 6 of those years. You can see that there is still some variability in who sees how much ahead potentially, but the generally theme is both active and snowy overall for the Midwest:
