January Bows Out; What’s Up with February?
With only a few hours left for the month of January, it’s time to take a look at what we experienced. The mean temperature for the month was 45.5°, which sounds cold, but is actually quite a bit warmer than normal, which is 41°. Of course, we were helped out quite a bit by an extremely warm start to the month. On the other hand, we had the coldest weather in two years on the 24th, when it went down to 14.6°.
On the rainfall side of things, we ended up with 2.14 inches of rain in January, compared to a normal amount of 5.03 inches in Atlanta, or 4.69 inches in Athens. I will admit having to fudge a bit on the actual precipitation during the freezing rain last weekend; since I don’t have a heater on my rain collector, it simply froze up after the temperature dropped below freezing, and then spewed out false rainfall on Sunday and Monday as everything defrosted. I looked at what Atlanta got, and what Athens got, and ended up somewhere in the middle. As my old boss used to say, it’s close enough for Government work.
What’s up with February?
As you may remember from this post, the initial outlook for February in North Georgia was for a chance of above normal temperatures, and normal precipitation.
Now, look at the updated forecast for the month, temperature-wise. The warmer than normal predicted temperatures in the Midwest are extended as far west as eastern Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana, with the likelihood of warmer temperatures greatly increased in Michigan:
And now for the precipitation predicted for February. The area of more than normal expected precipitation now moves further into the Ohio valley, and retreats from southern California:
All this looks good, except that the NWS forecasters admit that they don’t have too much confidence in their forecast, primarily because the models they use diverge quite a bit in terms of expected outlook, and they aren’t sure which one is right. As a result, they have relied on the early forecast, prepared ten days ago, for guidance more than they might normally have.
Other forecasts I read predict lower than normal temperatures and above average precipitation for the month. Who’s right? I don’t think anyone knows, because some of the signals used in predicting future weather are very contradictory. Perhaps we’ll learn more when the groundhog makes his prediction on February 2nd.
The same thing seems to be the case in predicting what will happen with the weather short term, specifically on Wednesday and Thursday. We know that a low is crossing the south, currently bringing rain from Texas to Alabama. This front isn’t affecting us in metro Atlanta, although parts of south Georgia are seeing some precip.
By Wednesday night, however, we will see between 1/2 and 1 inch of precipitation, as the front finally reaches our area. The question is whether this will be in the form of a cold rain, freezing rain, or snow. Right now, it looks like the jetstream will stay to the north of us, meaning we will only get rain. However, it’s only a matter of degrees, and there is still some uncertainty this far out.
After a welcome warmup over the weekend, with highs in the low sixties, we return to seasonable temperatures next week, with a chance of rain by the weekend. Even this is somewhat doubtful, since there is a possibility of a cold air mass from Canada pushing its way into Dixie midweek, which could turn rain into snow. We’ll just have to wait and see.
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