Colder than Normal Weather Pattern Moves In, Could It Persist Long Term?

Good Friday evening to everyone, as you noticed today we had a lot of sunshine as a cold front moved through late Thursday night.

That cold front is being followed another stronger frontal passage that will move through here on Saturday morning and it will deliver some cold air into the Carolinas.

As you also have probably noticed in our seven day forecast we expect temperatures to be several degrees below normal. A reinforcing cold shot will move in Monday keeping temperatures anywhere from 5 to 8° below normal for the middle part of November.

Taking a look outside the current seven day forecast there will be some moderation as a more zonal flow returns to the southern tier of the country the middle part of next week.

As you can see on the map above lower Heights are located across parts of Canada and that will eventually dip back to Southeast as we get into next weekend. So it is a very transient pattern here across the United States. It gets cold for a few days but then is replaced by milder weather and vice versa.

Now once we get past Day 10 we have obvious uncertainty in the details. But on a broad scale it looks like colder air will move back into the eastern US just in time for Thanksgiving week. The 500 mbar map below shows that as a trough settles back in across the east.

Personal Observaton: Note the higher heights over the Western Pacific? That is a favorable set up to bring cold air from Siberia across the poles into northern North America. That is known as a -WPO in the teleconnections. The establishment of that teleconnection was NOT there at all last winter.

Our forecast team will be very interested to see how long that negative WPO persist as it could play a role in the weather for North America once we get into the winter months. A combination of that along with Western North America ridging could lead to some impressive cold later on.

Anyway, The generally cool pattern is showing up already in some of the model numerical data in the extended range leading up to Thanksgiving. So this may be an early indication of what could be expected going into the holiday. Just something to have into the back of your mind.

Morganton Meteogram

Nov 13th averages: 61/39

Thanksgiving averages: 57/33

Shelby Meteogram

Nov 13th averages: 65/38

Thanksgiving averages: 60/34