The forecast remains largely the same from previous blogs and the forecast discussion. Unfortunately it doesn’t look as though the storminess we were hoping for next week is going to pan out due to the strong blocking from a high centered in Quebec. There’s a chance the storms move through the Ohio Valley or Mid-Atlantic, but it’s looking less likely that it’ll be a true nor’easter moving up through New England due to the blocked flow. The NAO stays strongly negative until the end of the month.
The worry with it taking too far of a turn toward neutral or positive is that we’ll end up with a warm event when this breaks, similar to what happened MLK weekend. Now it was a positive event for New England mountains, but not helpful in the Mid-Atlantic or for those living outside the terrain, where rain took over. With the cold we’ve had entrenched, we can expect a pattern flip when this polar intrusion retreats. The ensembles haven’t quite picked up on a flip, but a more so a moderation, the first week of February.