Rain. Snow. Mild Temps. Take your pick. CONUS has experienced all 3 within the first week of the month. Mild temps stretched across most of the nation brung us a rare opening of spring-like warmth for FEB. Quick-moving West to East jet streams with shorts jabs of artic air instrusions has been are default weather pattern this winter and looks to remain for the month into March. At this point its time to cut our losses & write winter off. But I can't say its done yet.
A snowstorm that hit Colorado last week shut Denver Airports down, cancelling thousands of flights for a few days. This airport is a main hub for Frontier, focus city for Southwest, and 4th largest hub for American Airlines running over 635,000 flights for over 51 million passengers.
Snowfall totals measure up to 16" already for first 5 days of month with over 12" falling Feb 3rd.
This storm didnt impact just Colorado, it also hit Wyoming, Kansas, & Nebraska.
About 85% of the Central Rockies, 45% of Western Plains, 23% of Upper Midwest, 22% of the Great Basin, & 12% of the Southwest is covered in snow. This makes up mostly 26-27% of Nations current snow cover. Here's a Satellite Image showing the snow cover amongst the 4 states mentioned above.
While their gettin most of the snow, and the midwest and East Coast is getting mild temps, down South, Rain (and T'storms) was hitting Eastern/Northeastern TX, Loiusianna, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia.Texas who suffered one of the worst droughts last year is still trying to recover. Rainfall has been most beneficial in the Dallas area but can't say the same for the rest of the state.
Storms spinning up in Southeast Texas last week confirmed 8 tornado touchdowns. Although severe weather causes damage and claims lives, more story weather patterns would help Texas recover from a drought thats been persistant for almost a year. As Spring approaches it looks like more wet precipitation could ease drought conditions before scorching summer heat absorbs the soil easily putting them back into drought conditions. Amazing! Hope those Mayans are wrong, feels like the world really is ending huh?
Lets take a look at Super Bowl in Indy. The weather played a huge role in the success of the event & all activities. Record attendence would not have occured if Indianapolis didnt have an avg temp of 50° during the period of Jan 27-Feb 5th.When Indy should avg 15°-20° cooler for this time period. Indianapolis hit 61° & 60° on Jan 31 and Feb 1st, respectively. One of the warmest ending January and opening Februarys for atleast the past 10 yrs or beyond.
Concerts and Ziplining in cold weather is not anybodys cup of tea. Last year, Indy was digging out of a icestorm. With this years turnout, likely, Super Bowl could return to Indianapolis but can't say it would be the same weather-wise. Indy could've gotten put to the test considering last years snowstorm that effected Super Bowl in Dallas, but Indy lucked out, next time..can't make a good promise, which is obvious.
What a remarkable past few weeks this has been. (You may ask) What does the term meteorological winter (you frequently hear) mean?
Well meteorologists simply refer to this as the 3 coldest months of the year (December, January, & February). With this now being February we are on our way to Spring. And while reliable Punxtawney Phil saw his shadow predicting 6 more weeks of winter, past observations is evident enough to forecast this may play out untrue. No real big blast of artic energy will impinge upon us anytime soon, atleast within 10 days. A minor artic front will hit the midwest a few times but nothing shows this will stay. It comes, does its business quickly, and moves out. The see saw affair of Warm then Cold (and repeat) will continue for the remainder of the season. Bottomline, keep the shorts & winter coats handy as we soon will begin to fully transition to Spring in the coming weeks. Also, mark your calendars for March 11. Daylight Savings Time will begin, therefore, on this date you'll have to "SPRING" your clocks forward an hour. More details & weather blogs to come.
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