TODAY'S FUN LINKS:NASA Earth Observatory - February 16, 2021 A potent arctic weather system chilled much of the United States with frigid weather in mid-February 2021, shattering low-temperature records in the middle of the country. |
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Business Insider - February 17, 2021 The severe winter storm raging through the southern US brought such extreme cold that it confused weather satellites monitoring the situation. |
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The Weather Channel - February 22, 2021 The 2021 Atlantic hurricane season is less than 100 days away, a fact that's perhaps hard to believe given the recent winter siege across the country and the record-smashing 2020 season. |
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USA Today - February 17, 2021 The U.S. has endured a wild stretch of harsh winter weather lately thanks to an invasion of the infamous polar vortex. It may be counterintuitive, but could global warming have caused this? |
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WTMJ-TV - February 21, 2021 The Tuskegee Airmen, known for the painted red tails of the P-51 Mustangs they flew in World War II, are the first Black aviators in the U.S. Army Air Corps. |
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NASA NCCS - February 20, 2021 Using a NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) supercomputer and other high-performance computing (HPC) platforms, the multi-agency Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation (JCSDA) successfully demonstrated software “supercontainers” for its next-generation Joint Effort for Data assimilation Integration (JEDI) system. |
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Yahoo! News - February 17, 2021 British scientists have launched submersible gliders near a massive iceberg breakup in the far southern Atlantic Ocean to see what effect the melting freshwater has on the surrounding salty sea. |
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News4JAX - February 16, 2021 NASA’s RainCube satellite proved big size not always better. |
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WIRED - February 22, 2021 Energy plants, like those in Texas, don’t guard against events that are perceived to be exceedingly rare. That’s no longer an option. |
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WEATHER HAZARDS (During The Next 24 Hours)
SEVERE WEATHER OUTLOOK
(potential for tornadoes, damaging winds, and large hail within the next 24 hours)
ISOLATED Severe Thunderstorms
(Microbursts, Large Hail, Isolated Tornadoes)
C, E TX....NW LA....C AR....W TN....C, S KY....S WV....W VA....W MD
HEAVY RAINFALL OUTLOOK
(potential for an inch or more total rainfall within the next 24 hours)
Scattered Locations In
NE TX....SE OK....AR....W TN....KY....S IN....S OH....WV....N MD....DE....C, S PA....NJ....NYC, LI NY
(QPF 1 - 3")
WINTER WEATHER POTENTIAL
(potential for temperatures below 15 deg F; threats for snow and/or ice above 2-4")
Numerous Locations In
C, E SK....MB....E ND....N MN....W, N ON....N QC....Labrador
(Intense Cold)
Scattered Locations In
SE MN....N, C WI....Upper MI....C ON....SW QC
(Snow; 4 - 8"; Some Sleet, Freezing Rain)
Scattered Locations In
BC....N AB
(Snow; 4 - 12"; Mostly Higher Elevations In BC)
Scattered Locations In
Newfoundland
(Snow; Near Blizzard; 4 - 16")
(a review of important weather features around the world)
IODC
ECMWF, EUMETSAT (2)
While the harsh, bitter Arctic motherlode in Siberia looks to be in retreat, the southern branch of the westerlies still has enough cold air and energy to produce potent thunderstorms, heavy rains, and mountain snow across the Levant and Persia.. The first impulse in the series (western and central Iran) will break up over Afghanistan, but there are two more shortwaves which could produce mountain snowfall and lowland severe thunderstorms (close to the Persian Gulf shoreline) on March 1-2 and March 4-5). Very warm temperatures and high relative humidity will be moving up in the classic "Out Of Africa" fetch that is easily seen on METEOSAT IODC imagery.
HIMAWARI 8
Kochi University
An interesting set-up is occurring over the Orient and the Pacific Basin. The Madden-Julian Oscillation seems quite impressive, with convection and three tropical cyclones embedded. But note that the MJO signal is oriented below the Equator, and is not linked to the strong disturbances ridging along the polar jet stream. This scenario is fairly similar to what transpired in January, where cold intrusions followed storms from China into the U.S., but never settled in and drew in Siberian or Alaskan cAk intrusions. This month ending, of course, had an incredibly long-lived, freakishly cold week in the middle of it that smashed records standing more than 120 years ago. Bottom line here: if you judge conditions west of the International Dateline, any shot of Arctic air into North America could be brifly impressive, but will not last more than two or three days.
GOES WEST
NOAA/NESDIS
The active storm sequence and subtropical jet stream is still evident on GOES WEST imagery off of the U.S. West Coast and Baja California. This is the reason why it would be unwise to declare winter over, since the low latitude position of the southern branch wind field and constant pulses of cold air and energy in the polar westerlies virtually ensure potential for larger precipitation events and pockets of stronger cold advection. For instance, there is an excellent chance that the southwestern states will see a colder period and some lower elevation snow again later in the new week.
GOES EAST
NOAA/NESDIS; ElDoradoWeather.Com
Despite some saying that the entire continent would warm up and that snow had vanished, GOES EAST satellite views suggest that the Arctic motherlode is broad and strong across Canada, and the snowpack still has wide coverage over the northern tier of the U.S. Note the disturbance taking shape over the Intermountain Region, which will act as a trigger for both strong thunderstorms form Texas into the Mid-South and Appalachia as well as snow and sleet across portions of the Midwest and Great Lakes.
METEOSAT
EUMETSAT
The run of mild, mostly fair conditions in western and central Europe is likely to end by the middle of the week. The formation of an Icelandic blocking signature at 500MB will correspond with the formation of a cAk vortex over the Gulf of Bothnia, which will likely retrogress into northern Germany during the following weekend. This -NAO signature will have impacts on North America as well, enabling some of the very cold values in Canada to occupy (for a time) the eastern third of the U.S.
Thunderstorm formation in southern Africa is mostly clustered in Mozambique and Tanzania. The northern portion of the continent is mostly controlled by a broad Saharan hat ridge, except for Morocco which is under an upper-level low in the southern branch jet stream.
