Here, we see a much different, yet somewhat recognizable, pattern across the North American continent. The weather doldrums seem to have spread from southern Arizona across much of the CONUS for mid-April. Moving out into the long-long range, we start to key in on the synoptic pattern, and not so much individual features like we were previously analyzing. Companion plants are plants that aphids love, even more than they love your tomato crop, while nematodes include a range of insects that like to eat aphids. It looks like this ridge has the potential to bring some seriously warm air into the United States when we see the correlation kick in. It’s worth watching for another storm threat, as we see a depression in the contour lines right over Japan that indicates the presence of a weak storm system. We describe recent efforts to improve the Hakamada‐Akasofu‐Fry (HAF) solar wind model that is presently used in our geomagnetic storm prediction system. In: Economic Information, Decision, and Prediction. All client-side variables modified by predicted player input must be added to a prediction table.

The screenshot above, from a Storm Prediction Center publication, shows 500mb height contours in two different northwest flow situations, with the severe weather outbreak area circled. It is possible we see a storm drag warm air north from the Gulf of Mexico to set-up a severe weather threat, but that’s all speculation at this point. It’s quite possible we see a sustained warm period from March 2nd to the 8th, if these ridges hold together. We eventually see that ridging fill into Japan a couple of days later, as this 500mb height anomaly forecast from the most recent ECMWF forecast shows. Weather forecasting in true sense is the application of science and technology to forecast the atmospheric state for a given place or area for upcoming time. This would likely see a return of cold and stormy weather somewhere in the March 9th-13th time period, as we use that 6-10 day gap between East Asian weather and United States weather.

We’ll begin with the weather over the North Pacific and East Asia. This change from a suppressed ridge to a building ridge is reflected well by the tilting of the depressed 500mb contours from east to west, giving the Upper Midwest and North Plains some chilly weather, sparing the East. Apart from some sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTAs) defining various oscillations that also affect our weather, these swaths of above or below normal SSTAs correlate to positive or negative 500mb height anomalies, respectively. The primary reason is the swath of above-normal sea surface temperature anomalies over the northeast Pacific, as this graphic shows. Shown above is a previous ECMWF model forecast, showing 500mb height anomalies over the aforementioned regions. Although, global warming relates to an increase in the average world temperature, different regions will experience different climatic effects. If so, we would need to consider global warming as a contributor.

If you are hiking on a trail that is far away from a visitor center or ranger station and a lightening storm occurs, you need to immediately get away from any water, ridges, isolated trees, or exposed places. This means that if there is a storm system in Japan on a certain day, we can expect a storm in the US 6-10 days after that. The ride was quite bumpy at points, since we were hanging so close to the jet stream (the large changes in wind speed in the vertical can cause wind shear that breaks into turbulence). Here is a short-term forecast of wind speed (knots) at jet stream level (300 mb–roughly 32,000 ft) while I was crossing the big ocean. 190 mph and the speed relative to the earth’s surface was nearly 800 mph! I noticed that wind gusts were very strong out west at Kitt Peak on Saturday and Sunday, with 12-h maximum gusts ranging from 56 to 93 mph – as shown on the two time-series plots below. Amounts from the northern 2/3 of the ALERT network are shown above for 24-hours ending at 06:00 am MST this Monday morning.