While a storm track from the Ionian Sea into the Middle East is not a frequent one, historically, they are most common from the months of November to February. Looking ahead to the future, we see there is a strong consensus for this negative AO to continue into the middle of March. If we look towards the Himalayan mountain range, however, we can see some oranges (and more recently, reds) bubbling up in the mountain range. From here, I can reasonably assume that the warmth in the Himalayan mountain range will continue to increase in the upper stratospheric 10 millibar level. This does signify that the stratosphere is warming in that area, and sudden stratospheric warmings have been known to occur off of mountain ranges, particularly the Himalayan range. This cold air then moves down the stratosphere and troposphere until it hits the surface. Surface analysis indicates the presence of a disturbance to produce showers and thunderstorms, and 12z soundings indicate some shearing is present in the atmosphere.

To give you an idea of how high up that is, we live at the 1000 millibar mark, commonly known as surface level. Shown above is an animation of temperature anomalies at the 10 millibar region in the atmosphere. Now shown above is the forecast for the North Atlantic Oscillation, or NAO. This all depends on if the Himalayan warmth even propagates into the Arctic, which there’s not a 100% confidence in right now. From early February to now, we have seen a very chilly Arctic, meaning the chances of anomalously cold air reaching the lower latitudes and the polar vortex becoming more unstable are lower than normal. When the polar vortex (swirling your straw around) is weak, cold Arctic air is released down to lower latitudes, and can penetrate into the US. In the positive phase, a stronger than normal polar vortex (swirling your straw around fast) is observed.

Think of how you used to swirl your straw around in your drink in restaurants when you were a kid. I think a split at both SunTrust Park and Busch Stadium will set up the deciding game 5 in Atlanta, where the Braves will win on a walk off single by Josh Donaldson. However, based on past experiences with Himalayan stratospheric warming, I think what I typed above has at least a decent chance of coming true. If you look at the animation, you will see it start with sudden cooling after a large sudden stratospheric warming in January. If the atmospheric pattern is able to allow this cold air to flow into the US and not other parts of the world, we would most likely see additional chances for wintry weather, including snow and cold. As far as I can see, the first half of March has fair potential to be chilly in parts of the US.

You can also join the big community, and share with your photos and videos or just report the weather conditions in your area. The NAM has been showing this for a while now, but not at this much snow for this big an area. Too much rainfall for example, the case of Elnino (1998) results into negative impacts on life and properties. This is known as the negative phase of the AO. Analyzing the forecast above, we see that the AO is negative at this time and has been negative recently. This moving down takes a good 2-4 weeks, so if the sudden stratospheric warming event did come to fruition, we would still have to wait 3-6 weeks before we see its effects. In the next 1-3 weeks, we should then see movement of this body of warmer than normal temperatures propagate north and likely into the Arctic. If we look above, we see the long range forecast of the Arctic Oscillation from the American ensemble forecasting system.