February 2026

[Matthew70]

50 minutes ago, jaxjagman said:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/lake-erie-january-more-ice-23-years-9.7067884

Maybe the old style winters are coming back. 

[Matthew70]

35 minutes ago, Carvers Gap said:

Ah, yeah.  I forget he is in the TRI right now!  Awesome for him!!!

Weeklies looked decent.  Feb10-20 there is a -NAO w/ a trough undercutting the block from Seattle to Savannah.  That is often a great setup, but still a ways to go before that - so it could change.  But the 500 map looks good.  I always kind of find that February is a month where we look for windows of winter precip.  It is also a month where the jet can buckle on very short notice - remember that February is a time when the long wave winter pattern at 500 breaks down over the NH.  That means that the amplitude of troughs/ridges often increase and the frequency of those troughs/ridge can be more numerous.  It can be a month of chaos.  I wouldn't even worry about d10-16 right now....very likely to change many times.  And this week is not without things to track.  Next weekend has ago be watched.  It is weird, but weekend winter storms are incredibly common as are storms on a 7 day rotation.

I had forgotten about the wave lengths changing in February.  Winter storms in February usually are wet snows & bigger. Hopefully no more ice.   

[jaxjagman]

13 minutes ago, Matthew70 said:

Maybe the old style winters are coming back. 

Could be,but if this was what the MJO showed in March of 2021, i'd be getting excited..lol

[Matthew70]

9 minutes ago, jaxjagman said:

Could be,but if this was what the MJO showed in March of 2021, i'd be getting excited..lol

I read where it will take sometime for the moisture return off the gulf to help fuel severe setups. Due to how cold the gulf has become.  No idea if that would be true.  I definitely feel we will have some very sharp battles between warm & cold from frontal passages.  

[jaxjagman]

20 minutes ago, Matthew70 said:

I read where it will take sometime for the moisture return off the gulf to help fuel severe setups. Due to how cold the gulf has become.  No idea if that would be true.  I definitely feel we will have some very sharp battles between warm & cold from frontal passages.  

Possibly,its still warm into the GOM,be interesting to see how it cools the next few days

[jaxjagman]

14 minutes ago, jaxjagman said:

Possibly,its still warm into the GOM,be interesting to see how it cools the next few days

This map should have a better visualzation today

[jaxjagman]

SSTS in the modern day era since summer has been well AN since summer,still be interesting to see what happens in the upcoming days

[Matthew70]

3 hours ago, jaxjagman said:

SSTS in the modern day era since summer has been well AN since summer,still be interesting to see what happens in the upcoming days

What does the SSTS mean.  I’m sure I could google & find out.

[jaxjagman]

51 minutes ago, Matthew70 said:

What does the SSTS mean.  I’m sure I could google & find out.

Just look at the red line,the GOM has been one of the warmest since the 1980's

[BlunderStorm]

The tuesday/wednesday shortwave:

Hmm.

[Holston_River_Rambler]

3 hours ago, BlunderStorm said:

The tuesday/wednesday shortwave:

Hmm.

I would almost guarantee that will have at least a little front end thump of sleet and snow for some spots. Now it may not be a big thump since it doesn't look like it has too much .qpf, but I've seen this little show a few times, after snow and cold is in place. 

  

[Holston_River_Rambler]

Yeah, speaking of High Knob, VA and Black Mt, KY from my obs post......

6z RGEM

[Vol4Life]

Interesting that the 6z GFS showed a very similar setup with a clipper/ULL type system this coming Sunday evening for much of ETN.  Obviously, 7 days out, but the GFS has done a good job of sniffing out potential 

[Daniel Boone]

4 hours ago, Holston_River_Rambler said:

I would almost guarantee that will have at least a little front end thump of sleet and snow for some spots. Now it may not be a big thump since it doesn't look like it has too much .qpf, but I've seen this little show a few times, after snow and cold is in place. 

  

Apparently KMRX and KJKL have differing opinions irt precip along the KY/VA Border Counties from that. Could be One's using different Model than the the Other. JKL has mix to Snow for Harlan while MRX has predominantly Rain and quite a bit warmer on this side of the Border.

[jaxjagman]

In the long range i'd stick with what the JMA is showing with the MJO.The CFS has some bias with the tropical convection into the WP/MC from Rossby and Kelvin Waves,you can clearly see this once again,this causes contructive/destructive interference with the MJO signal

[Daniel Boone]

5 hours ago, Holston_River_Rambler said:

Yeah, speaking of High Knob, VA and Black Mt, KY from my obs post......

6z RGEM

Euro close to that. Wouldn't surprise me at all. 

[Daniel Boone]

8 hours ago, BlunderStorm said:

The tuesday/wednesday shortwave:

Hmm.

Bears watching. I wouldn't buy into the mainly Rain Depiction most our spitting out. Thermals mighty close. Euro and RGEM may score again here.

[BlunderStorm]

10 hours ago, BlunderStorm said:

The tuesday/wednesday shortwave:

Hmm.

12z model guidance 10:1 accumulation. We've got a borderline case in SWVA. With snowcover out to the plateau low level westerly advection is going to pay an extra tax tuesday afternoon on top of local reflectivity. What soundings I checked show a relatively blunt 700mb to surface zone of mid thirties in the near miss cases. This one is probably lost between 700 and 850 since I struggle to believe it gets above the upper 30s close to the surface.

[GBOVolz]

Could snow on the ground affect thermals for the short wave in the middle of the week?


.

[John1122]

I don't know if winter will be over after this upcoming warm up,  but it's unlikely to return to anything remotely like we've had this week with the cold and ice/snow being able to stick around. The Euro doesn't even go below freezing from the 9th to the 16th here. It's head faked warm ups a couple times this year already, but often when the Pacific breaks down in February and a big warm up hits, it lasts so long that we are in March before it relents.

[John1122]

44 minutes ago, GBOVolz said:

Could snow on the ground affect thermals for the short wave in the middle of the week?


.

It may hold down surface temps slightly but in the atmosphere is where the temps will cause it to rain.

[BlunderStorm]

24 minutes ago, GBOVolz said:

Could snow on the ground affect thermals for the short wave in the middle of the week?


.

I'll take a jump at it even though I'm entirely out of my depth. I think it does but I don't know how models handle it. Taking wind into account I believe it's about how much time an airmass spends over snowpack. I think there is even a scenario for the tri-cities if the wave is weak but not so weak you can't get decent QPF (need column cooling) AND it hits late like at 10pm instead of 6pm. All that said you can play everything right on the ground and get screwed between the dgz and near surface. Getting Knoxville in would probably involve more pressure over the great lakes tomorrow. There is a low in Ontario that might be messing with the upper levels inviting marginal thermals from the south central US. We also would benefit if the high over the Dakotas tomorrow was a bit stronger or quicker to reach Minnesota or ideally Iowa. Short of all that you could maybe hope for a kink in the upper levels later in the night, say wednesday morning that ran up behind the main wave like a really really weak app runner instead of a slider. I think this small event is more controlled by latitude than anything wherever that 540 line turns neutral I reckon and I think that's over me up here per model indication.

[Carvers Gap]

Cosgrove warned on his Saturday night extended forecast that the upcoming, brief warm spell could lull people into thinking winter is over.  He noted that winter should return fiercely around mid-month and last through roughly the first week of March - then we break for spring which may well be wet and stormy according to LC.  I see a window around Feb 15th and one around the 21st.  The last half of the month looks cooler than the first half.  If we are talking 95-96 as an analog, winter came back yet again after the first series of storms during that winter.  OTH, 85(also an analog) simply got warm in February.  I gotta be honest....I need some warm wx for a few days.  

Jan31st was -20.6 BN for TRI.  That is an incredible number.  TRI will finish w/ 8.6" of snow for January.  Amazing finish to the month given that we had incredibly warm days for Jan 1-10th.  I do think we need to watch any cold front(next weekend for example) as sometimes modeling has under-modeled the cold.

So far, we have had two very cold air masses strike this winter...One after Thanksgiving which lasted into the middle of December.  We had about a three week warm-up, and then the more severe cold shot(currently) hit.  It has lasted for nearly three weeks.  I suspect we repeat the pattern one more time, but am not guaranteeing this.  The Weeklies do support a cool down during weeks 3-4.  But just because we warm-up for a bit does not mean snow is not possible during that "warm-up."  The NAO will likely be negative which places the storm track south of its normal location.  

We have just witnessed one of the great winter reversals of this century after that wild chinook.  

[Carvers Gap]

The 18z GFS is advertising upslope next weekend for NE TN, SW VA, SE KY, and IF real...likely the Plateau works itself into the equation.  

[Carvers Gap]

Just shuffling through wx maps and the weeklies.  I looks like next weekend could be very cold yet again.  Then, we warm-up during the second week of February.  That has been well advertised and is no surprise.  Then, sometime between d17-24 we could have another strong cool down per the Euro weeklies mean and control.  That holds for roughly 2-3 weeks.  Again, that really fits the winter pattern.  But....changing wave lengths have the potential to create more chaos than normal within modeling.  We are entering a time frame where LR modeling gets very undependable, even at the long wave level.  But I do think roughly sometime between Feb 17-20 looks like the next resupply of very cold air(after this weekend).  The NAO will often not be felt by modeling until just a few days prior to it strengthening.   It establishes sometime (if models are correct) between Feb 8-9th.  Then, I think it takes about 7-10 days for the eastern NA pattern to respond w/ a suppressed storm track.