A Cold 2011; Cold GFS This Evening Too

I posted about this a few weeks ago, noting that most likely it’ll be the coldest year in Portland in the past 26.  Now it’s official:

Interesting to note two things:  one is that we’ve been sliding downhill since the early 2000s west of the Cascades.  In our region (#2-Western Lowlands), 3 of the past 5 years have been a bit below average.  The 2nd item is that the rest of the USA isn’t following quite so closely.   They have continued to be warmer than average (unlike the Pacific Northwest), but a downward drop the past 8-10 years.  It’ll be REAL interesting to see what happens in the next two years.  Will we reverse things in 2012 here in the Pacific Northwest…a warmer than average year?  Or just a continued wallowing in the cooler than average weather?  Who knows…another reason I don’t get too wrapped up in the Global Warming subject.  We’ll have a better idea in 10 years.  Besides, I have far more pressing concerns.  That would be producing a daily weathercast and 7 Day Forecast; that affects me in the here and now.

One of those concerns is a possible change in the 2nd half of January towards colder (and wetter?) weather.  The new 00z GFS came out this evening and looked much better for a cold blast of air around day 11-12.  That would be a week from this coming Friday-Saturday.  Even I was interested when I saw it since models have been hinting at MAYBE something changing in 10+ days.

Disappointment though when I pulled up the 00z GFS Ensemble chart:

It shows the operational GFS (blue line) as the coldest of all models during that period!  Ughh…time will tell.  It’s also interesting that the operational run is just about the WARMEST the first half of next week.  The average of all the runs beyond next Tuesday IS cooler than normal, so at least we’re not seeing a huge ridge staying in place.  The ECMWF has been showing that at/beyond 10 days out.

Chief Meteorologist Mark Nelsen