Groundhog day?

Alright folks, we have a couple of days of relief before we have to worry about another plowable snow event.  I'm not going to spend much time talking about that because there is still too much uncertainty at this point.  I'll dive head first into that system tomorrow.  Today I want to change it up a bit.

Yesterday of course, was Groundhog Day.  I'll admit, I don't know much about the history of it, nor do I really care that much.  :-)  It is a tradition however, so it should be honored to an extent.  The rules go as follows:  If the Groundhog sees his shadow, we should expect 6 more weeks of winter, but if he doesn't see his shadow, Spring is right around the corner.

I heard a stat yesterday that the ground hog has only not seen his shadow 15 times in the 100+ years that they have done this.  That basically mean, the other 89(i think) times, he has basically said that spring is going to start on time.  February 2nd, plus 6 weeks puts us very close to the official start of spring.  So basically, things are going according to the nature change of seasons.  This year, he DIDN'T see his shadow, which according to the legend, or whatever you want to call it, Spring will be arriving early.  And it's to that, I call shenanighans, well, partial shenanighans.

Here's why: 
1.  Look at all the snow on the ground.  It's not going anywhere for a while.  Once that cold layer gets there, its hard to move out, cold air is more dense than warm air.  That makes its hard to move.

2.  There is a large cork in the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean.  This plug in the atmosphere is essentially restricting the zonal, west to east, flow around the earth.  Instead of the west to east flow, we have a more north to south flow, and that is pulling air from Russia, across Canada down into the Central and Eastern United States.  This is also one of the main reasons we are getting all these storms, we are sitting right on the storm pathway.  Until that blocking high pressure breaks down, the storminess will continue.

There is two things working in our favor.  Longer days and an increasing sun angle.  The more sun we have and the higher it gets in the sky, the warmer it will get.  This will happen even if there is a lot of snow on the ground, it just takes longer.  One of the problems we have had this year is that the sun has not really been out between storms and if it was, it was too darn cold for the sun to do anything to melt or compact the snow.

I'm expecting the frequency of storms to remain moderate to high, but will gradually see them bring more mixed and rain to the region over the next 4 weeks.  I have a feeling we will not have a very nice Spring this year.  It will likely be on the chilly side and unfortunately with all this snow, the concern of flooding will be high.

Lastly, I'm looking for suggestions on what you would like to see in this blog.  Do you have weather questions that you would like answered?  I'm all ears.

You can follow me on twitter @ jpkomarek

Thanks for reading!

-Jon K.