ORLANDO, Fla. – You know the catch phrase: hold on to your butts!
We’ve seen very generous warming across Central Florida the last week and some change now. This is because our pattern has officially flipped on a large scale, with troughing that was once extending over the eastern half of the nation now buffeting the western half.
Over us especially, we’ve been dealing with dominant ridging forcing warmth and humidity from our southern friends in the Caribbean into our neighborhood.
But, with all things weather, there is always a shift coming down the pike. We’ve held steady in a negative “Pacific North American Oscillation,” which is typically a great predictor looking long range when our grand scale weather pattern may inevitably flip. With a negative pattern in place, ridging remains stationary over us and we warm up.
Models indicate as the warmth continues, it will eventually tip the scale out of balance once again and the cold could return for millions.
Now, Central Florida will not likely see freezing temperatures, but a small break from the 80s is on its way. The rest of the eastern U.S., however, will deal with a return of below-freezing temperatures, wintry precipitation and lots of snow fall.
Let’s take a look at a few of the variables helping direct us meteorologists towards issuing this word of caution.
First, we have “teleconnections” which if you’ve read previous articles of mine, we’ve dabbled in a couple of different occasions. These are crucial when predicting things like winter weather, cold or warm spells and even hurricanes!
The Pacific North American Oscillation is one of many. Then we have a few others like the AO, or Arctic Oscillation. This helps us directly monitor where the coldest air is. Whenever it dips into negative values, we typically see a spilling of this cold air south across the U.S.
Next up, the North Atlantic Oscillation. You’ll hear this brought up a TON during the hurricane season later this year, especially since it seems models are predicting a very interesting set up across our Atlantic basin. When we have a positive NAO, lower level features are not very progressive. This means they aren’t moving!
Looking at our latest data here, you can see the values are expected to dip quickly into the negative threshold. As a meteorologist, this tells me immediately, our pressure centers over Iceland, the North Atlantic waters, and parts of western Europe are going to weaken. This will allow features that drag cold air south from the poles to move in.
Finally, ENSO! ENSO is the big one, we’re all familiar with. The El Niño Southern Oscillation is where we derive the El Niño, La Niña, or neutral phases we usually discuss at nauseum during the hurricane season as well. It plays just as pivotal of a role in our winter and spring seasons as well, dictating cold outbreaks and tornado outbreaks.
So! What do you need to know? Florida will likely remain in fairly mild temperatures, with some mornings dropping into the low to mid 50s especially the further north you go in our viewing area. But, as we’ve discussed prior to this, it doesn’t seem like we’ll be smacked upside the head by another invasive plunge of arctic air.
But, even though temps aren’t going to landslide, this could mean as we roll through time, a welcomed bout of rain or two could be on its way.
Get today’s headlines in minutes with Your Florida Daily:
