Winter to take a break?

You have to admit, it seemed winter was going to get off to a brutal start when we received 3 to 6 inches of snow about 10 days before Christmas. Since then, we’ve had a couple of one to two inch snowfalls but nothing major.

Over the weekend, we had to deal with some ice. But it seems this January has been known to cause a little “weather whiplash” as I like to call it. We’ve gone from bitter cold mornings near or below zero to record breaking high temperatures a few days later. We even had rare severe thunderstorms roll through the region with over 50 mph winds last week.

If you are thinking our weather is going to calm down anytime soon, think again. But if you don’t like winter weather, you may just like the forecast over the next several days. A major weather pattern change that really started last week will continue as we head through this week. The jet stream, which is a river of fast moving air high up in our atmosphere that divides cold arctic air to the north and warmer air to the south, has shifted into a more spring-like set-up. This means that temperatures will likely average well above normal. In fact, it is possible temperature may approach 60 degrees again later this week or weekend. Unfortunately though, this warmer pattern is also a wetter one. You’ll definitely want to keep your umbrellas close by.

So does that mean we are going to escape the next two months with no more winter weather? Don’t count on it.

The latest long-range outlook shows the weather pattern changing again, perhaps as early as next week. That will mean a return to more of the cold we are used to for late January into February. After all, we are only one month into winter. We still have two more to go. And in recent history, some of our bigger snowstorms have come as late as March. Anyone remember March 2008? If not, you may want to Google search that. That was also a La Nina year which is the weather pattern that we are currently in. If this winter winds up being like 2008, our bigger winter storms are still yet to come.

Eric Elwell is WHIO StormCenter 7 Chief Meteorologist. Contact him at eric.elwell@coxinc.com or follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

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