Updraft: January 31, 2012 Archive

9th warmest January? No big storms through Valentine's Day?

Posted at 4:52 PM on January 31, 2012 by Paul Huttner (1 Comments)
Filed under: Winter 2011-12

45 degrees in the metro Tuesday!
(Just 1 shy of the record of 46 degrees)

+ 7.5 degrees vs. average at MSP for January
(pending final numbers)

Warmest January since 2006
(which was the warmest on record)

9th warmest January at MSP?
(Pending final numbers Wednesday)

6th warmest January in Duluth?
(Again, pending final numbers Wednesday)

90% of the Lower 48 States warmer than average in January 2012

0" to a trace of snow now in most of southern Minnesota

4" to 12" snow depth in much of northern Minnesota

16" Snow depth at Kabetogema Lake in far northern Minnesota!

.04" Total precipitation at MSP through Feb 16th? (12Z GFS model output)

18 days Pitchers and catchers report to Twins Spring Training in Fort Meyers on February 18th

"June-uary" is one for the record books:

January 2012 goes into the record books in Minnesota. According to Mark Seeley, this will likely go down as the 7th warmest January statewide. This will be the warmest January since 2006 in Minnesota, which was the warmest on record.

This will go down as another "top 10 warmest" month again in Minnesota. Our warm streak (and drought) is now 7 months deep.

Temperatures this month have run a full 5 to 9 degrees above average in Minnesota!

Just one year ago, ice dams as big as small cars sat on rooftops in Minnesota. Today you're lucky to find an inch of snow in southern Minnesota, but there is decent snow cover up north.

February: The drought continues?

The medium range maps don't look good for snow lovers as we head into February.

The storm track stays south of Minnesota, and not all that active anyway. Our mild westerly Pacific extended "Indian Summer" pattern looks like it will hold through Valentine's Day.

Tuesday morning's GFS model run is printing out a paltry .04" of precip through February 16th! The GFS also advertises several more days at or above 40 degrees in the next two weeks.

Unreal.

Broken Winter:

The overall northern hemispheric air flow is about as close to "broken" as I have seen it in winter. Yes, there's plenty of cold air in Alaska. But there appears to be no mechanism to send it surging south this year.

We've talked about the strong positive Arctic Oscillation (AO) this winter, which tends to keep the cold bottled up near the Arctic Circle. Even though the AO has gone negative in the past weeks, the cold air has so far failed to come south in any sustained way.

Who knows, there is still a chance that cold may come south in late February and March, and still a chance for a snowy pattern to develop before we can totally write off winter. But the odds are getting slimmer with each passing week.

Last year's 86.6" snow blitz was the 4th snowiest on record in the Metro. This winter we've scraped together just 14.9" so far. If we somehow managed to skate by with under 7.5" the rest of the season, we could go from the 4th snowiest to one of the top 10 "least snowy" winters in back to back years.

At this point I'd say we're looking at one of the shortest, mildest, and "least snowy" winters in Minnesota history.

Stay tuned!

PH

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