Light snow, then bitter cold, then more snow?

We’re not breaking any records but we are certainly locked in to an unusually cold and snowy winter pattern.

 

·         A cold front is approaching the area tonight and it will bring a dose of severe cold.

o   First, we could see a brief burst of snow tonight that might accumulate an inch or so in some places (see below for one model’s projection). Don’t be shocked to wake up to a covering on untreated surfaces tomorrow morning.

·         Temps will peak in the teens tomorrow and fall through the afternoon. We’ll be in the single-digits to near zero tomorrow night and likely at or below zero Wednesday morning and Thursday morning. Thursday’s high will struggle to make it out of single-digits.

·         Friday and Saturday will “warm up” to the 20s, but the price will be a chance of another significant snow. Stay tuned for details but the Friday/Saturday period looks very promising for significant accumulating snow across the Chicago area.

·         A second cold surge arrives Sunday. It doesn’t look quite as cold in Chicago as the Wednesday-Thursday variety, but we’ll see.

·         To skip ahead, I’d reiterate two points.

o   The reliability of long-range forecasts (beyond 10-14 days) is very, very low. The best indicators we have are the correlations to El Niño/La Niña conditions, and this year we essentially have neither.

o   Really strong, persistent patters -- like the mild, sunny and dry pattern most of eastern CONUS had in the fall and the cold, snowy one now underway – are prone to sharp “flips.” Yes, there are short- and medium-range feedback loops, but there is nothing ensuring a cold winter just as there is nothing preventing us from a mild January/February.

 

Now for the fun facts everyone has been waiting for.

 

·         Fun fact! Our season-to-date snow total officially at ORD is already over 14 inches and the highest since the barbaric winter of 1978-79.

·         Fun fact! Our snow totals officially at ORD (6.4” last week and 7.8” this weekend) make this only the fourth time on record that Chicago has had two storms of >6” in the first two weeks of December. The most recent occasion was 2000 -- a month that saw a crazy total of 41.3” at MDW and 30.9” at ORD -- and the other two were 1978 and 1934. And no, none of those years are good analogs if you like mild winters!

·         Fun fact! About 1 in 8 Americans will more than likely experience a subzero temp this week.

·         Fun fact! The broadly-defined area around Chicago has about a 40% chance of a White Christmas (at least 1” of snow cover at 6am on the 25^th) based on historical experience. (I’d put our odds this year a little higher.)

·         Fun fact! Most people know that the solstice (December 21^st at 4:44 AM CST this year) is the shortest day of the year (i.e., the day with the least amount of possible daylight, with the sun’s least direct rays in the northern hemisphere and the most direct rays over the Tropic of Capricorn). But because of the oddities of the earth’s elliptical orbit and the difference between solar noon and the time we keep on our clocks, the earliest sunset of the year has already passed (last week on December 8^th, to be specific). We’ve already pushed the sunset back by a minute or so, and from here until June the sunset will get later each day. (For related reasons the sunrise will get later even beyond the solstice. This season the latest sunrise will be January 3, 2017.)

 

 

 

 

 

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