I apologize (yet again) for my forecasts being sporadic. There’s something about March that messes up my emotional state badly, and it interferes greatly with my ability to focus on getting things done. (The fact that I don’t get paid anything for this certainly doesn’t help.) On top of that, over on my other site, there’s been the big story on the local (former) congressman, Eric Massa, which is where I’ve devoted most of my time the past few days, which, by the way, have been absolutely beautiful.

While the warm temperatures (in fact, even warmer than the past couple of days) will in fact stay around for a while, the dry and sunny skies we’ve been used to will not. A very slow moving low-pressure system is moving its way northeastward along the Great Plains, and to its east is a warm front. This warm front is bringing with it strong warm-air advection, which indicates lift, in turn indicating rain. The fact that many places still have a large snow pack from the February storms is going to make flooding an issue; though much of that has melted or sublimated away in the past few days, there is still a significant pack of several inches remaining, particularly on shaded surfaces and north-facing slopes. I suspect that the rain is going to melt most of that away in the next couple of days. Once that icy cover is gone, it will reduce inhibition and create the potential for warmer long-term temperatures.

Speaking of which… while I know that my colleague Andrew insists it’s going to reach the 60-degree mark where he’s at, I’m not very convinced of that yet for down in these parts. The MOS products are in consensus that it will be in the mid-50s for the entire four-county forecast area for both today and tomorrow. The 12Z weather balloons haven’t gone up yet, so I’ll need to take a look at them when their numbers come in and make revisions. Still, mid-50s is well above our typical average of 39, and there’s no way I’m going to be complaining about that.

To be continued…

~JMF