Happy Friday Everyone!

I hope you've been enjoying the sunshine and the relatively quiet week of weather. A ridge of high pressure continues to keep things moving from west-to-east, and also continues to send all the moisture well to our north.

HPC - Surface Map - Friday PM

There's an even stronger area of high pressure across the border in southern Canada, so that rain/snow in the Great Lakes will be squeezed eastward toward New England. Overall, some pretty light stuff.

Now, even Sunday's precipitation is being called into question:

GFS - Sunday AM	GFS - Monday AM

The ridge over the tri-state doesn't really break down, which means the approaching showers head up and over us and the tail end just doesn't have a whole lot of strength left. Not that we have a ton of agricultural concerns in December, but it still would have been a better situation if we finished the year with balanced weather. Instead, Huntington and Charleston have both experienced one of the driest Novembers on record, and pulled about 3" below normal for rainfall.

The next opportunity comes Tuesday night into early Wednesday, but this one also has the makings of a fall-apart-er...

GFS - Tuesday PM	GFS - Wednesday PM

If we're going to get any snow around here, we're going to need something better than this. These high Canada storm tracks are not good precipitation events locally, and never end up bringing a good push of cold air behind them. A lot of the time, the good connection to Gulf Moisture fostered over the central part of the Ohio Valley gets severed once the mountains get involved (as is the case here as well).

Here's how the month of December appears on current modeling:

CPC - Forecast Outlook - December - Temperature	CPC - Forecast Outlook - December - Precipitation

Click either of the above for a larger image.

In some respects, that is a La Nina type forecast, with the up-tick in Ohio Valley precipitation. However, it's still a weak El Nino environment, and the current projections (that are known to change) now contain most forecast members in that weak El Nino arena:

Current ENSO Forecast	Current NAO Forecast

Again... Click on any of the above for a larger image.

If a weak El-Nino combines with a positive NAO in December, that doesn't bode well for snowfall (as folks may remember from our recent Winter Weather Preview series). However, notice the sharp negative swing at the tail end of the month... The two combining may get us one of those nice southern-track snow storms just in time for Christmas, yes? Wouldn't that be nice ;-)

Just for everyone keeping track, here are the 'historical' probabilities for a White Christmas in the tri-state area (from the Weather Channel).

Needless to say, they are not too common off the mountains to begin with.

Regional Radar/Satellite with Warnings Tracking	Accuweather Radar

From the Storm Prediction Center (below): Click For a Larger Image

Activity Overview	Storm Outlook	Watches	Potential Watches	Storm Reports

Temperatures	HD Doppler Radar	Estimated Rainfall	Active Warnings
Click For Larger	Click For Interactive Radar	Click For Larger	Click For Larger

Have a great day everyone!

-B

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