Tumultuous U.S. Weather Pattern Has Started, Could Get Worse: Storms, Temperature Whiplash

Some flip flops in the weather patterns will keep
meteorologists hopping for the next few 
months. After cool weather in the East,
there's some hints of warmer air 
in the second half of the month. 

Almost every year, in the late fall and winter, we get spells in which the weather pattern flips around in a big transition or even bunch of transitions.    

When that happens, our weather in the U.S. can get wonky. 

We've just entered one of those transformations  in recent days. So expect some weather weirdness, which could get more extreme once we get past Thanksgiving. 

The weirdness began in age days ago. 

We started out with dozens of record lows in the southeastern United States last week, thanks to air that came directly from Greenland to normally balmy places like Georgia and North Florida. 

Wilmington, North Carolina  experienced their earliest in the season snow flurries on record.  Lumberton, North Carolina had 0.1 inches of snow, their earliest measurable snowfall on record

Then the heat turned on in the Great Plains over the past couple of days. 

On Saturday, cities in Texas and Oklahoma reported their hottest November temperatures on record, including 93 in Frederick, 92 in Lawton, and 90 in Ada, Hallmark, Allburton and Sand Springs. 

The temperature reached 92 in Wichita Falls, Texas, and 90 in Lubbock for new November records. 

On Friday, Minneapolis reached a record high of 72 degrees. It was the warmest on record for so late in the season. Des Moines and Ames, Iowa both reached 74 degrees for record highs. Perhaps the weirdest high on Friday was 83 degrees in Yankton, in southeastern South Dakota. 

That's awfully far north for 80 degree weather in mid-November. 

The next odd thing was the storm over the weekend in southern California. Los Angeles had two inches of rain over two days. The normal rainfall for the entire month of November there is 0.8 inches.

There were widespread reports of minor flooding, mud flows and downed trees, but the damage was not as bad as some feared. 

UP NEXT 

The weather pattern across the Lower 48 will experience large changes over the next few days and weeks. 

It won't be all that exciting at first. Over the next few days, fairly routine weather systems will cross the nation this week, not enough to generate big weather headlines. In the middle of a weather pattern adjustment, storms can get a little disorganized and lack power as a result. That's what's generally happening now. 

Then things could get interesting. 

But that warmth in the Northeast might not last. NOAA
is hinting at colder weather again over the Northeast
in the first half of December. 

It looks like we're in for two big pattern changes, and that can blow up some big storms this time of year.  

Long range forecasts for the second half of November suggests a possible switch from chilly to somewhat above normal temperatures here in the Northeast, though the NOAA forecasts are hedging a bit.

The West would turn cool.  Between the two extremes, some of the computer forecasting models are trying to sniff out a fairly large storm around Thanksgiving. 

It could even be one of those Great Lakes "gales of November" storms made famous with the Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald. 

But we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves. Trying to forecast a storm this far in advance is kind of a fool's errant. Anything - or nothing - can still happen. 

DECEMBER CHAOS? 

Those milder temperatures, even if we get them, might not last much past Thanksgiving weekend. Even longer range forecasts suggest a return to cooler than normal weather for the first half of December. Those December forecasts also lean slightly toward above average precipitation, which might translate into another snowy period. 

I'm seeing hints of the first truly Arctic air mass of the season cross the border from Canada into the United States toward the first of December. Again, that's set in stone, but early December is the time of year somebody in the northern United States starts to see below zero temperature.s 

There's yet another wrinkle in the long range forecast beyond Thanksgiving. 

It's complicated, but here it goes:

Something called a Sudden Stratospheric Warming Event is taking place high in the atmosphere over or near the Arctic. This happens from time to time in the winter, but this one is oddly early in the season. 

For whatever reason, a layer of the atmosphere 6 to 31 miles up, above where weather happens, it disrupts the polar vortex.

As you might remember, the polar vortex is a huge whirl of cold air that usually stays up north, fairly close to the Arctic.

When the polar vortex is strong, it tends to keep frigid air bottled up far to the north of the U.S. and Europe. 

A sudden stratospheric event weakens the polar vortex and can displace it. The jet stream gets wavy and wonky, and you can get extreme cold and winter storms in parts of  North America, Europe and Asia.

The click bait out there is telling us we in the U.S. can essentially expect practically a new ice age as a result of this by mid-December. 

Don't hold your breath that one. 

The reality is it's possible we could get a strong cold wave, or some nasty winter storms. Or we might not. Maybe the really cold air will go toward Asia or Europe. Or the polar vortex won't get all that messed up. If that happens things might not get unbelievably wonky. 

The bottom line is, the weather has gotten more interesting in the past week, and it will probably stay on the more interesting than usual side for the next few weeks. 

What "interesting" means is TBA.