What happened to winter?

I had a moment Saturday afternoon where I was sitting outside wondering, what in the world happened to winter? As we pointed out at the end of last week, getting to 60° in January happens often, but normally they don't stay very long.

Where is winter?

First, take a look at 7 a.m. temperatures in Canada. You'd have to go well into central Canada to find any bitter cold, Arctic air. It's tucked away well north of us, so any cold front that approaches this week isn't going to change temperatures that much. The Northeast US is getting hit with some pretty cold air, but you won't find very much of it around Kansas this week. The snow cover is patchy to say the least, between Kansas and Canada. The Rockies (as you would expect) still has plenty of snow cover, but for early January, the snow pack isn't as deep as you might anticipate.

One storm on the horizon:

We will be carefully watching the development and track of a system that will approach the Plains later in the week. Right now, it's looking like a system that will again, track mainly south of Kansas. It will be a system that should have mainly rain with it, but some snow chances may briefly sneak in for Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas, and Missouri. For now, we will consider this a "close call" and see how things change as the week continues.

Arctic air later this week?

Doesn't look that way. In fact, if you take a look at the map for Friday afternoon, once again we see almost ALL of the bitter cold air still locked up well north of us. So we don't expect (in the next 10-12 days) to see any major blasts of winter.