NOW THAT"S A TROUGH!

From Alaska to Hawaii

Just under Alaska, note how closely spaced the isobars are. There is a lot of Jetstream energy cycling through this part of the trough. Further to the south and closer to Hawaii, there's another tight region, but in between the flow is pretty calm. The top part of the trough is progged to leave the bottom in the dust, with a cut-off feature spinning into midweek. This will amplify the ridge along the west coast and leave us primed for blast after blast of cold Canadian air with a Northwesterly flow. A short wave which is progged to pass through our area mid-week has now been showing up in long range data with enough consistency to warrant attention. Precipitation has wavered over the the weekend though now the trend is slightly on the rise. The latest GFS is frozen by midnight, heading into Thursday and spitting out a couple of tenths of precipitation which would correlate with a few inches of snow. We'll see falling temperatures on Wednesday and the onset of precipitation in the liquid form. As cooler air filters in closer to midnight and into Thursday morning, a change to snow looks likely.

We'll be fine-tuning this one in the days to come... check back for more details.

Posted by Ted Zarras at 8:24 PM