Long Range: Winter is Coming…January Pattern Change Details
So far this winter has been mild here with historic warmth. We released a previous premium article stating the reasons why. This is still in much dismay of snow-lovers, while a blessing to many others. But we’ve been discussing a pattern change here for January for a while, and now it appears that some parts of that pattern change are coming together a little sooner than we thought. Some of the climate patterns we discussed are going through major changes.
The pattern change will begin with the development of a large ridge over Scandinavia next week. This ridge builds into a very strong, anomalous ridge over the Barents/Kara Sea next weekend. Meanwhile a deep low/trough near the Aleutians causes another large ridge develop over Western Canada. Both ridges cause the polar vortex over the high-latitudes to begin elongating or splitting, from northwest to southeast. These changes will cause the AO to fall into the negative phase and the PNA to rise into the positive phase. This process results in a large trough with seasonably cold temperatures over the Eastern US shortly after New Year’s Day.