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Yes, I am nervous about my trip...it needs to avoid Kansas and Oklahoma both! I just need a day or two before the 28th for the road crews to clear it. I don't want to miss this!!!!!

24-26th or bust!
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Scott,

Maybe the pattern will be flatter and we will have to explain how it is the same pattern, and then we miss it so you can have your trip........NO, I am selfish. I want another storm, but maybe not on the two days of your trip.

Gary

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Goodbye Snow:(. Hello Spring (yuck,nooooo)! I'm crossing my fingers for one more big Snowstorm with like 128" of snow!! That would be a dream come true! :)

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Hello, I forgot but on FutreCast, what does that Black dotted line mean? And after seeing what you said yesterday about it being 68 degrees on Valentiens Day, wow, that IS a huge difference. I only hope that one day, maybe it will be next year, and maybe it will be near the end of winter but, I hope we at least will once see the weather that was back in the 70's. I would really like to have that. And now for another question. Why is it that all of our biggest snowstorms of the Winter are in March? I hope that when we see one here soon, it will be further North here by the Legends. I would really like a 10 or as I keep saying 20inch storm. One last question, is there anyway that on your 10o clock newscast you could get us an image of the new Sprint Arena from your SkyView camera? If not, can you post it on your webpage? Since it's dark out you cant see it very good, so to get a better look at it, it may be tomorrow. I was just wondering how it was looking/coming along, because I haven't been down to Downtow Kansas City for a while.
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Alden,

Only the biggest snowstorm occured in March. Many others occured during December, January, and Februarly, but only one of those reached 16 inches.

Gary

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Is it me or does this little vort coming down look more like a MCS type event? What is the ratio now for snow..about 20-25 - 1? Maybe an inch or two at the most as I am only seeing about .05-.1 at the very most.
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Scott,

No, but in late June when this same pattern returns will you remember this wave?

Gary

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Gary how much snow are you thinking we will see lol just kidding. Oh i am going skiing saturday night at weston how cold does it look like it will be.
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Daniel,

You may be in great shape. Near 32 degrees the winds calm down and dry!

Have a fun time.

Gary

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Gary, pitchers and catchers report to spring training in less than 15 hours!!!! Can you beleive it? This may sound crazy to some, but warm weather, baseball, and a few rumbles of thunder mixed in sounds pretty darn good right now. I enjoy the change of seasons, that's why now is the time to look forward to exactly that. "Storm Dog", where art thou?, my warm weather freind. Signed, "Tired of plowing snow in the midst of people who can't drive"! Greg.
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Greg,

Next week should give us a bit of spring fever!

Gary

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Very busy with college and having internet troubles lately, but I found time to stop in:) The light snow today was neat, it was a bright day but with LIGHT snow coming down most of the time!
And no you didn't embarrass me the other day, I thought it was neat! the only thing that would have made it better was if it was a couple of dergrees colder, if we didn't get a lot of melting early on we probably would have gotten alot more acumulations than we did!
looks like we are in for a good windy clipper tomorrow!!!
Thanks for your time!
Nick going to bed in(3 below!!!) St. Joe!
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Nick,

It is 1 below at KCI right now. Wow. It is too bad that the clipper can't dive in harder. Come on!

Gary

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Gary:

Good cold morning to you sir!! I made it to minus 0.9 this morning at about 4:00 A.M.-I'm going to call it minus 1-what's .1 degrees among friends eh??? Winds of change are a blowing here in Lawrence as our temps. are already slowly rising. Interesting to note that the Western Dakota's are already in the upper 30's with one 41 degree reading-here it comes!!!! But, I had one last run in the arctic chill and it was very nice and peacefull!!!!

I think if I see it correctly on the surface charts, the Clipper is currently in West Central North Dakota and it is telling that with North Winds Western Montana is still above freezing-things have changed for sure!!! Will be fun to watch this clipper over the next few hours-models don't look real good (at least the 6Z GFS) but will be fun to track from surface observations!!

Have a great and fantastic day-I tip my hat one more time to the cold wave-wow-it was an incredible stretch!!!!

Bill still noticing the end of the month "event" is showing up on the modles in Lawrence!!!
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Bill,

The official low was -3 at KCI. And, -.9 is -1 in my book.

This clipper still has some potential. With so much snow on the ground from here northward maybe it will help it dig a bit further southwest. We just need a little bit.

Gary

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Good morning weather team at 12:39 am i had a tempature of -3.5 degrees in western wyandotte county.I hope we see some more snow tonight.Have a good day.

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Brent,

Thanks for the report. This morning may have even made true winter lovers look forward to spring!

Jeremy

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So, how much snow do you think we'll get tonight????? Ah, ha ha ha ha... Sorry, couldn't help myself.

********

I'll let you know tomorrow morning ;)

Jeremy

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Hello Jeremy,
Just wondering,bout what time you think it will be snowing here in metro KC, how long will it snow, is it a sure thing we will see snow???
Anne

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Anne,

Weather is never a sure thing. But we do have a 60% chance of light snow in the forecast today. Most if not all of the precip. on radar to the west/northwest is not reaching the ground right now. Most of the activity will hold off until late afternoon or evening in the metro. Areas north of the metro may see some light snow a bit earlier. This is what the latest data looks like.

Jeremy

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Earlier you said:
"Maybe the pattern will be flatter and we will have to explain how it is the same pattern"

How is that not the definition of molding the data to fit your theory?

If your theory is correct, it should state what the pattern will be with some precision, rather than just "find ways to" force the data into a pattern.

By that statement, it appears as though you're more than ready to take virtually ANY pattern and find what fits and say "see - this fits the theory!" and make it fit.

I'd be more curious to hear you really go out on a limb with your theory and say that these are the next three times we'll get hit with storms: Feb XX, April XX, and July XX or whatever. If your theory is solid, you should be able to make the call ahead of time instead of routinely looking BACK and "making it fit".
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Jake,

I was just kidding when I said that in a comment. It is fascinating how this pattern is cycling. We have the evidence. It all fits into the pattern of "long term, longwave troughs and ridges", and within the cycle.

Sometimes it is flatter. I will not just make something up so it fits the pattern. When you go through each cycle it can be a bit different, but it still fits. For example, remember I believe this pattern continues through sping and even into June and July. In July when there is only one or two lines of flow across the United States it is hard to imagine it is the same. But, I can show you that it truly is and the pattern is still cycling. At the same time it can't possibly have an upper low in Oklahoma like on November 30th of last fall, but the upper system could be in Canada, due north of where it was.

I will be more careful in the future when having fun with the data. We are out on a limb, by the way. We predicted the January 12th outbreak of Arctic air and storm weeks before it happened. And, we are on record for stating that the same pattern will be returning around the 25th of February give or take a few days. We are using the theory and it has, as I said in the winter forecast, provided our weather team with a HUGE advantage when forecasting long term and short term.

Gary

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Hello, forgot to mention this last night. Before I went to bed last night (11:30PM) the temputare was negative -4.8 degrees!! During your Ten o clock newscast it was about negative -2.5degrees. I also did a little expirment last night too about 9:30PM. I poured some water outside and it took it only Two Minutes to freeze! Just thought I'd let you know.

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Alden,

Thanks for the low temp update! Just think if winds would have been calm last night! Temps may have dropped to -10! The low yesterday at KCI was -3...just 3 degrees off the record low for the date.

Jeremy

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Weather Team,

At 12:21 a.m. I had a low of -8.7 in eastern Grundy County. Some snow tonight would be terrific.

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Ryan,

That is cold! The coldest air temperature I ever experienced when living in Minnesota was -32F. That same night the all-time record low for MN was set. If memory serves me right it was -59F in either Tower or Embarras, MN.

Jeremy

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"We predicted the January 12th outbreak of Arctic air and storm weeks before it happened."

Yes, but you also predicted that the outbreak would be short-lived (in your blog on Dec 21). I think this winter has shown some limitations to the cycle as far as a prediction tool. The cycle accurately predicted when the cold spells would start but didn't tell us that one cold spell would last about a week while the other would last for over a month.
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Rob,

Now we are getting picky. The "short lived" part of the prediction was based on the December version which lasted 8 to 10 days. The October version of this pattern is what returned. So, if I would have known better I wouldn't have added that into the forecast. We only learn more about the pattern as time goes by. The bottom line is that we did predict it, and there is no surprise at all that this continued for so long. Just look at our winter forecast which absolutely pegged this pattern about as good as possible. You can't deny that our winter forecast has been almost dead on!

Gary

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Jeremy,
You once mentioned it got to -59 degrees in MN. I'm curious, do businesses and schools close when it gets that cold? I think it would be dangerous to be outside in those temperatures.

**********

Marlina,

During that cold stretch and I think the day the record cold occurred ALL schools in Minnesota were canceled by the governor.

Jeremy

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Jeremy,
I checked the records and the lowest temperature recorded in Minnesota was -60F at Tower in either 1996 or 1997. The coldest temperature I have experienced was -30F when I traveled to northern Vermont. Next week looks like a heat wave for the plains!
Devin

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Devin,

The year was 1996...and I believe around Feb. 1 or 2. A great story from that cold stretch is the local McDonald's in my hometown was running a unique special that winter. Buy one quarter pounder with cheese and get the second for the price of the previous day's high temperature. There were many days that winter where the high never made it above 0! So the second sandwich was free a number of days!

Jeremy

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Jeremy,

Do you still forsee a storm by the end of next week? With the warmer temps, I guess we could be seeing an all rain event? Thank you.

Don H.

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Don,

Thanks for the post. There will very likely be a storm around Feb. 25-March 1. The models continue to put a storm near us during that stretch. Still too early to say whether it would be rain, sleet, snow, etc.

Jeremy

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Getting picky? You predicted the January cold snap would "last a few days". Those were your exact words. Instead it lasted for over 30 days. That is not being picky.

I think your cycle has a lot of promise and can be very useful, but you also need to be more open to the fact that it has limitations. You need to look back at things like this and use it to improve the forecast tool, instead of dismissing legitimate critiques as just being "picky".
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Rob,

I will admit that I was wrong on the "last a few days" statement. My point is that it is no surprise at all as it fits the LRC perfectly. Predicting long range is not impossible anymore. Many would think otherwise. So, I am open to all of this dialogue!

Have a great weekend.

Gary

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This may be a bit over the top, but I will give it a shot....

Oh..I love the skeptics of the LRC. Is it bulletproof? No. Is any theory bulletproof to the micro level of meteorology? No. If you have the perspective of viewing the LRC in the macro level, in which evaluating major features, and associated patterns, it can be more difficult to always show. This is especially true as Gary/Team has stated when the jet weakens and shifts in the late spring and summer. If you have the perspective of viewing the LRC in the micro level – which, in this assertion is the internal cycles within each major cycle, then there are very specific and repetitive events that have been proven. This is the case with the Nov 20th storm and the soon to be Feb 25th storm. Many others exist.

My point is that the LRC can be viewed and quantitatively proven at different levels and perspectives. The initial claim or theory primarily focuses on the larger features. I believe this is where Gary/Team are most comfortable in proving. I claim that this can be driven to the micro level [aka SMC- or intra-cycle variability] or even inter-cycle variability between two LRC complete cycles. [potential expansion of SMC principle].

Regardless of the view, I believe there is enough evidence to see the validity of the theory. I do believe there is greater opportunity to expound and document the theory, but the base is pretty solid, but more micro level examples may be required to satisfy the desire for greater proof for peer consensus.

That being said..maybe “flattening out the pattern� should have had the disclaimer of “inside joke� for those that don’t fully understand or accept the LRC.

Curses to the Team for having a sense of humor!
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Scott,

Great points! Now is it going to snow. That's all I care about at this moment.

Gary