Snow, cold, then warm up

Snow is approaching the area the model estimates have continued to trend higher. It is going to be a dry and fluffy snow, and the timing couldn't be better (Sunday night going into a Monday holiday). But we have a Winter Weather Advisory for snow through noon Monday and most of the area will see 3-4", so roads and airports are going to be slower than usual.

Temps are going to remain well below normal for most of the week. But by Friday, another major warming trend takes hold. Temps will climb into the 40s and 50s and should stay above normal through the end of January with any luck.

Elsewhere, travel disruptions are likely across the country this week. Snow/sleet could make it as far as Houston, and airports along the East Coast are going to struggle as well. 

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record cold streak; light snow; milder

It's not your imagination, and for once all the whining might actually be justified. The past two weeks have been REALLY cold.

 

Measurements and categorizations get arbitrary at some point, but I think we can all agree that a good definition of "really cold" is a day that fails to reach 20F. On that admittedly arbitrary basis, today we will tie the all-time record for consecutive days below 20 degrees.* It's not unusual to get a few days like this strung together in a cold snap, but to get 12 in a row is really unusual. In fact, the only prior occurrences in Chicago were in 1895 and 1936. For almost everyone this is among the very coldest periods in our lifetime.

 

Other feats and records:

 

• Chicago had its Coldest ever New Year's Day high temperature and its coldest ever average temperature.
• It was the second-coldest week ending December 31 in Chicago (and coldest ever for Rockford)
• The high temperature did not crack 15F between December 26^th and 31^st in Chicago
• The average number of below-zero nights in Chicago is seven per season but season we've already had eight just in the past week and a half. We've also had two more right at 0F. (Usual caveat that these are at O'Hare, nobody lives at O'Hare, temps will be a little warmer in the city and colder in the outlying burbs, some readings like Aurora/Sugar Grove are sketchy, etc. etc.)
  • We've actually not set any record lows, and we haven't even had an official low in the negative double digits. This is also the fourth anniversary of some bitter cold: on January 6th, 2014 the noon temperature was -14F!!! So yes, we've had individual days and multi-day stretches that were colder, but the persistence of this cold is very unusual.
• The city ran an icebreaker in the Chicago River yesterday to keep the water flowing freely.

 

 

Moving forward, there is a change coming. Sunday will see an assembling overcast that threatens snow. This will be milder air, with a little bit of moisture, running up over the cold air near the ground. There is likely going to be some snow accumulation, and there could be some ice too. Temps will climb into the 30s so this is a very tricky forecast. Be aware that anything from freezing rain to several inches of snow is possible. The best bet is a dusting in most areas from noon through early evening, with a few areas receiving 1-2" on the high side. 

 

Beyond that, we're going to have a mini-thaw before an even bigger thaw. Most of next week looks likely to be near or even above normal, with temps in the 20s and 30s. On Wednesday and Thursday we could well break 40F. The Thursday morning low might even stay near 40 degrees, which would be a ~40-50 degree improvement over the past few morning lows. 

A week from today will likely see a brief cold punch, although one that is milder than the current arctic outbreak. And the really big change is in the 10-14 day timeframe. There are strong signs that beginning ~10 days from now we'll warm up bigly, and we could be in for a prolonged period of above-normal temps. Check out the model runs below. If they verify for their respective periods January 11-20 we would see temps at some points well in the 40s. No promises, but with that pattern, no/low snow cover, and some luck, we could see temps of 50+ degrees.

 

 

 

 

* To demonstrate the borderline-ridiculousness of these numbers/definitions, there was a 13-day stretch of severe cold in 1963, but one day in the series had a high of exactly 20F so it wouldn't count for our purposes.

 

 

Quick side note about yesterday's Nor'easter. The center of the low stayed well offshore, sparing most of the big cities from a direct hit. Still, there were some decent snow totals: Boston LGA 13"; Islip 16"; Central Park NYC 10"; JFK 8"; EWR 8"; Charleston, SC 5.3" – not a typo! And the low itself hit <951 mb, which is very impressive. By some subjective standards it was among the two or three strongest East Coast storms of the past century. The coastal flooding in New England was unreal – it really did look like the storm surge from a hurricane, with the added twist that it often included chunks of floating ice. On one side of the storm the winds were pushing the water onshore (Boston Harbor set an all-time high tide record), while on the other side they were sucking it out to sea (Baltimore Harbor recorded its lowest water level in several decades).

NWS Boston : [OFFICIAL] Boston has broken the highest ever recorded tide since 1921. New Record: 4.88' MHHW (or 15.16' MLLW) on January 4th, 2018. Old Record: 4.82' MHHW (or 15.10' MLLW) during the Blizzard of '78.

NWS DC/Baltimore  @NWS_BaltWash

UPDATE: Preliminarily, at 1:12pm today, the water level at Baltimore was observed at -3.58 feet (3.58 feet below the average low tide), which is now the lowest observed relative to average low tide since November 21st, 1989. Starting to rise -- a little -- now.

 

The airports were also crushed. The entire airspace above NYC was closed to all commercial traffic, and even super jumbos like an A380 from Singapore had to divert to tiny Stewart Airport in upstate New York. Other airports became so full that planes were diverting to airports as far away as Chicago, Atlanta, and Bermuda. A handful of planes also made it halfway across the Atlantic before realizing there was literally nowhere to land, so they turned around and went back to London, Paris, etc.

 

Surge/flooding:

 

• https://twitter.com/jsimp1610_/status/948979968117231616
• https://twitter.com/rgoulston/status/949068185835319296
• https://twitter.com/jsimp1610_/status/948981620249452544

 

Air pressure in Boston Harbor:

Wave height in Mass. Bay:

 

 

 

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New year, new record!

Welcome to 2018 -- the new year has established itself with the coldest New Year's Day in Chicago history. With a high of just +1 we set a new record low maximum temp, and combined with the low of -9 we have a new record low average temperature. (Both records were previously set at +5 and -2.5, respectively, in 1969.)

So yeah, this is incredible. We were more than 30 degrees below average today; temperatures roughly follow the normal distribution so it's fair to think about the equivalent "warmth" for today that would put us in the mid-60s.

This outbreak is both impressive and immense. The cold is actually worse just to our west (-20F this morning in Omaha) and it extends all the way to Texas (17 in Dallas this morning, with a high in the 20s), the Gulf Coast, Atlanta (18F/29F), and the Northeast (New York saw 7F/19F). By area, two-thirds of the Lower 48 had a high below 32F today. That is amazing. And >70 million Americans woke up in 2018 with subzero temps. That is also amazing.

We are going to be in the deep freeze all week, albeit with slightly more moderate temps (10-20 degrees warmer than today). There is nothing impressive on the horizon for snow but it wouldn't take much to get a few inches given the temps.

By Sunday we may be all the way up to normal but we'll have to see how the following week plays out.

Happy new year!