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Monday's forecast: Highs in 20s, colder overnight
A warming trend arrives, with 40s possible Tuesday afternoon!
(FOX 9) - After a chilly few weeks and the coldest calendar month in almost 8 years, we finally thaw out a little this week... thanks in large part to a slight shift in the jet stream.
The jet stream is the river of air at the top levels of the atmosphere that circles the globe. It's the steering current for storms and separates colder air masses to the north of it from warmer air masses to the south. That river is shifting farther north this week. Now, it's not much movement in the grand scheme of things, but it's just enough that we will likely be on the warmer side of some clipper systems rolling across central North America. But because that river isn't moving a lot, we will still dabble with some colder air, we just won't have the long duration arctic cold for the time being. You can see that in the temperature animation below.
A warm bubble of air moves in Tuesday as a clipper passes by, but then temps quickly fall during the day Wednesday and into early Thursday. Before rising briefly again into early Friday before falling farther this weekend. Therefore, we are NOT straight up committing to a long-term thaw. However, 2 or 3 periods of above freezing temps through the end of the week look pretty likely.
Because it's been so cold, our snowpack and associated soils are also quite cold. So even with temperatures finally getting above freezing for a while this week, don't expect our snow to suddenly melt away. There will certainly be some compacting and melting, especially on and near roadways where salt has been used, but the majority of our snowpack will likely stay intact... for now.