In A Zone

Surface high pressure over the Southeast, without strong high latitude blocking in the Arctic, usually means mild weather around here and we're about to trot into such a pattern over the next week, perhaps a touch longer.   The jet stream, which is current shoving Canadian chill our way, is poised to shift to a more zonal pattern as high pressure at the surface waxes and wanes.  In its stronger times, the high will bring us temperatures that will approach 50 degrees, perhaps as early as Sunday in Philadelphia.   In a zonal pattern, however, quick moving fronts try to push through and we'll probably have such a front on Monday that will try to knock temperatures down a couple of degrees.

However, the surface high pressure will wax stronger towards midweek next week -- this combined with a slight nudging of the zonal jet to react to a stronger dip in the jet over the Pacific will result in a west-southwest flow at the surface and aloft.   IF this takes place, we could hit 60 at some point next week.   We're forecasting 55 for next Thursday but it's based on "playing it safe" at this point because what is modeled seven days out and reality sometimes are two different things -- see the "paper storm" computer guidance was spitting out a bit more than a week ago.  However, little in the way of flies in the ointment are popping up at this point as modeling and pattern analysis are in pretty strong agreement about some sort of warm up taking place.   How warm we ultimately get is still to be determined -- 60 is definitely do-able in this warm-up...and for many around here, it will feel quite nice.

A cold front will slash into that warm up for President's Day Weekend, with temperatures that may bounce back down towards normal.    It does look like, for the foreseeable future anyways, that the cold we're dealing with now may be it for a while...and perhaps the uber cold (daytime high temperatures in the 20's or low 30's) may almost be a thing of the past.