Cold finish to 2014 - white for a few as well

Hello Arctic air!! We are in the home stretch of 2014 and it looks like the year will end on a very cold note for much of the state. But then again, it is wintertime and it's not that unusual to see temperatures drop into the single digits and teens.

Bitter cold slips south

One of the things we've been looking at is high pressure building up in the Gulf of Alaska. When that happens, it allows these big chunks of Arctic air to slide south and invade much of the central and northern US. We saw this happen back in the middle of November when the temperatures went from 70s back into the 20s. I don't think this will be a two week cold snap though, as some of the forecast models take most of the really cold air back to the northeast by the weekend.

One possible track of a storm late in the week - the track is the key

Speaking of the weekend, there is another storm system that will emerge from the southwest by Friday-Saturday. We've been on the fence about whether or not it would bring some moisture to our area. I've had some questions on Facebook and Twitter asking about when we will see a nice, big snow (more than just 2 or 3 inches). The storms that arrive from the southwest are usually the ones that dump heavy amounts of snow on Kansas, but this one looks to be tracking too far south. I'm posting an image of what one forecast model was showing on Sunday, but already this morning, it looks like the moisture might be moving back south again. So it's looking more and more like the weekend storm won't do much for us in Kansas, but we know how things can change around here.

Sunset pictures from Dec. 28 from Timothy Cox - near Salina

Courtesy Timothy Cox - near Salina