Enjoy the Warm Weekend While You Can, It’s Probably Going to Snow Next Week
We’ve all gotten pretty weary of the “Guess what? It’s gonna suck out/it sucks out/it will never stop sucking out” Winter 2014 updates, but seemed appropriate to give fair warning that this nice early spring weather we’re having today? You should really be making the most of it. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow, the temperature will plunge down to the 20s Sunday night, and after a chilly Monday, it’s looking pretty likely Tuesday will bring us snow. Again. This is a Friday night when you should be out.
There’s even been vague talk of a bigger nor’easter happening next week, though it’s still unclear how big the storm will be and whether or not it will make its way to the Northeast in a significant way. Slate has a helpful, if depressing, explanation of the ongoing freak weather pattern that’s made this winter such a brutal one:
“[NOAA’s forecast] shows a “Rex Block”—named after the first meteorologist to crack this particular pattern—currently forming off the West Coast. Blocking patterns are pretty much what they sound like: quasi-stable arrangement of high and low pressure centers that join forces to gum up the works of the atmosphere, freezing in place—and in some cases, amplifying—the weather du jour. In this case, winter. […] The upcoming pattern is a twist on the “ridiculously resilient ridge” that recently plagued North America for months, plunging California into historic drought. [… ] Blocking patterns like this one are also known for their fickle behavior. They could stay in place for three days or 13 days (or more). The most we know right now is that, back East, winter is going nowhere fast.”
Per the National Weather Service, “At the very least, potential exists for unusually far southward extent of some wintry precipitation for late March … given cold sector temperature anomalies of 10-25 degrees Fahrenheit below normal. At the very most the potential exists for southern/northern [jet] stream interaction to form a late season Midwest to Eastern U.S. winter storm by Tuesday/Wednesday.”
All of which is not to say that you should despair over another potential month (!) of on-and-off bad weather, just that we should be a little careful about dressing aspirationally (don’t swap out all your winter clothes for summer ones just because you’ve decided it’s time), and more importantly, that it’s key to make the most of the warm days we do have. There’s a way to get through this, and it isn’t making a precious warm Friday the night you decide you’re “just gonna stay in and hibernate, it’s been such a long week.”
Follow Virginia K. Smith on Twitter @vksmith.