February is the last month in "meteorological" winter, but in recent winters, it sure seems like the coldest air of the season shows up at this time. That may very well be the case this year too. Arctic cold has been avoiding Kansas, and while most of you reading this are probably okay with that, it would be quite strange to not have at least one good dose of it before spring.
Here's where the very cold air is building up - central and northern Canada. We can even trace this air back to Siberia (Russia), so we aren't messing around when we say it will be cold. Thursday evening, look at the negative numbers in Fort Simpson and Yellowknife. Wow.
At this time, I don't expect to have record low temperatures, but the duration of the cold could be significant. Falling below freezing for a couple of days in a row is not really noteworthy, but if it lasts for 5 or 6 days consecutively, that's different. And that could be where we are headed.
Here's an example of what we are up against:
In my limited research on Tuesday, I found that back in 2014, Wichita did have a 7 day period in February that was below freezing. Since then, they have all been fairly brief, mainly 4 days or less. So lets keep that in mind as we start preparing for this period coming up.
Snow chances - they are mixed in from time to time. I don't foresee any big storms coming through the area. In fact, we are moving into a kind of setup that will favor just light precipitation (if any at all). Upper level winds will be coming out of the northwest, so a heavy snow event would seem unlikely for Kansas in the near future.
A chance for snow sets up for Saturday:
And we will need to watch the Tuesday/Wednesday time frame next week (this could be a case of light snow and some freezing drizzle)
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