The next two weeks are likely to be good examples of one of my general rules about winter weather in north Georgia: when wet weather arrives, it’s too warm to snow, and when it’s cold enough to bring the white stuff, we’re in a dry period.

The southwesterly flow of the jetstream is going to bring wet weather for most of the upcoming week, beginning with rain late tonight and Sunday. Unlike Thursday’s front, which brought only light precipitation, this system is stronger, and could bring an inch of rain. This time, though, the cold air is further north, so there’s no worry about freezing rain or sleet, in metro Atlanta, although the northwest corner of the state could see a little sleet.

The chance of rain continues throughout the week, as the system basically stalls over our area until Thursday, when things clear out for the weekend. At that point, we may see the long awaited pattern change to colder air. High Temperatures for the last week in January are likely to be in the 40s, with lows in the 20s. It’s also likely to be a relatively dry period, without much of a chance for snow or ice.

The Weather Service is continuing on its El Nino theme in its long range outlook for the month of February. They predict above normal temperatures for the northern Mississippi Valley, stretching through Tennessee, and then normal temperatures for the southeast. They also predict above normal rainfall for Florida and south Georgia, but equal chances of above or below normal precip for Alabama, north Georgia, and North Carolina. Accuweather.com disagrees, predicting colder than normal weather for the eastern half of the country, with above normal precipitation.

In the unusual weather department, much of Europe is recovering from hurricane-like weather from a storm named Kyrill that brought 125 MPH winds, power outages, downed trees and transportation delays from Britain to Czechoslovakia on Thursday. The storm, which is reported to be the worst in 25 years, caused over $1 billion in damage.

I tuned in for Monday Night Football, only to see snow on the ground. “Is the game in Green Bay?,” I asked a friend. No, it turned out to be in Seattle, which is expecting one to three inches of snow tonight.

Poor Seattle has had more than 15 inches of rain in November through Sunday, or 256% of its normal rainfall of 5.9 inches. The situation is so bad that it made the front page of this morning’s New York Times.

The extraordinary storms have already exceeded the November record, and could exceed the all time monthly total precipitation record for the area, set back in December, 1933. Although Seattle is known for being rainy, it typically received less rainfall than Atlanta on an annual basis: the wet reputation is due to the the constant, slow drizzle throughout much of the year.

The cold Seattle weather is a preview of an Arctic blast that will affect much of the nation later this week, although it still looks like it will fall short of Atlanta.

If early season weather is a predictor of what we’ll see in January and February, it’s going to be a bad winter. First, Buffalo, New York recorded record snowfall in October, and now a rogue storm is bringing pre-Thanksgiving snow to North Carolina and Virginia, while 10 degree below normal temperatures are making Atlanta feel like mid-January.

The nasty weather is being caused by a large low pressure system that sits stationary off of the Georgia coast (see below). Cut off from the jetstream, it is spinning around, bringing some of the coldest air of the season into our area, and causing rain, snow, and beach erosion along the coast. Temperatures in Atlanta have been 10 degrees below normal for the last two days.

Because the storm has not moved as quickly as earlier anticipated, our warmer weather has been delayed by a day or so, with the best day of the weekend now anticipated to be on Saturday. At least the storm is far enough east that the Atlanta area hasn’t been hit by the rain that is falling 1/4 inch per hour in Charlotte, with 40 MPH winds, or in Augusta, rain and sleet.

This weekend’s rain (2/3 of an inch measured here) is the result of a relatively unusual July weather phenomenon — a cold front, which is currently stalled over Gwinnett County. To our northwest, as close as Rome, dewpoints have dropped into the 50s where the front has passed. From Atlanta south, they remain in the 70s, making Sunday’s weather unpleasant, even with temperatures 10 degrees cooler than on Saturday.

The frontal boundary is going to stick around through the early part of the week, and then move back north as the Bermuda High tries to return to its usual place of dominance for North Georgia Weather. That gives us at least some chance of thundershowers throughout the week. A better than normal chance of rain for the next two weeks means that we’ll see seasonably normal temperatures through the period, with highs around 90.

Meanwhile, a heat wave that started out by giving extra warm temperatures in the Pacific Northwest will grow to cover much of the West and Plains states through the end of the week. In the west, Hurricane Daniel is likely to cause problems in Hawaii, while Tropical Storm (soon to become hurricane) Emilia will bring rain to Southern California. On the Atlantic side, a low pressure system in the Gulf of Mexico may show signs of tropical storm formation, but otherwise, things are quiet.

So far, May is running about 3 degrees cooler than normal, on average. The normal mean temperature through May 14th is 66.9 degrees, while we stand at 63.8 degrees — actually cooler than what we had in April. However, Atlanta temperatures are likely to get back towards normal by the end of the week.

The main cause of our cool and wet weather this month has been a persistent upper low pressure system over the Great Lakes that hasn’t moved a lot for the last week to ten days. While this has kept temperatures (and humidity) lower than expected in the South, it has caused misery in the northeast.

In Boston, for example they are three degrees cooler than normal as well (averaging 53 degrees), but they have had almost seven inches of rain through May 13th, 500% of normal. The storm has forced governors in Massachusetts and New Hampshire to declare their states disaster areas, with the storm bringing up to 15 inches of precipitation in some spots.

The whole soggy mess is expected to finally move away this week, and that will bring weather more typical of late May to the East coast. By this weekend, we could see highs in the low 80s, which is about normal for this time of year. At this point, I don’t expect to see temperatures much above normal until Memorial Day weekend.

And, it looks like we should be grateful for the rain we’ve gotten over the last two weeks. National Weather Service long range forecasts are calling for less than normal rainfall once the upper low, and the fronts it has been driving into Georgia finally departs.