Truly Amazing to watch the extent of snow cover in the country advance South over just the past few days. Over 73% lower 48 U.S. snow cover on this date is the greatest extent at this point in February since they started tracking it in 2003.
Putting it overly simplistically, the snow also outlines the mean primary jet stream storm track. Known as a baroclinic zone the jet stream aloft divides the cold air North from the warm air South.
As a rule snow and ice are found to the North/NW of a low pressure storm system, and with the track close to Atlanta the low pressure frontal systems have not been quite far South enough to bring us a true snow or ice storm as the cold air here has been too shallow.
And we have had a dozen “Miller A” or “Miller C” low pressure storm tracks which are normally favorable for “real” snow or ice storms in the Metro Atlanta. Here comes another one Thursday:
We keep missing out despite record level -A0/-NAO (Arctic and North Atlantic Oscillations) which often signal a favorable pattern for snow or ice in Atlanta, truly amazing that it hasn’t happened locally with the NAO negative 95% of winter days so far, that’s the 2nd most on record which goes back to 1950!
But the warmer Pacific Ocean +WPO/EPO MJO and -PNA overcame the pro-snow patterns of the North Pole and North Atlantic.
I do note that in 34 years here I’ve never seen snow flurries sleet and graupel as often as this winter, six so far.
Many winters in Atlanta history have zero snow or ice, not even flurries once. NO SNOW is more normal than snow in Atlanta.
The weather weirdness of the past couple decades regime shift continues. Yet another La Nina/El Nino (ENSO) of several that has not behaved as typical in the past.
The Sudden Stratospheric Warming and Polar Vortex disruptions have brought rare heavy snow to many parts of the world. The latest in Greece (AP Photo):
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