0910  MARCH 5

Meteorologically speaking I would argue that the months of March and October are probably the most interesting months of the year because those in the months that are the transitions. The winter pattern we have seen for most of his winter over North America has broken down. So while I will not say that winter is over for the northern third of the US… for most areas of south of Interstate 80… it really is.

That being said I am not saying there will be no more snow over the big cities in the Northeast or in the Midwest. I am talking about the exceptional winter pattern we have seen. THAT pattern is over.   Accept that  and you will be  a lot happier.  That Bering said the pattern   remains stormy and     active. t

This image shows the Day 9  pattern on the European and the GFS models– the image on the left hand side shows the DAY 9 European model 500 mb ( jet stream) map and the right-hand side is the GFS. ha’ve highlighted with the two thick black lines the overall pattern so you can see exactly what I am talking about.   What is happening here is that the blocking Ridge — the positive height anomaly in the lingo of the meteorologist–   has continued to retrograde from Greenland and Eastern Canada now into central Canada. This has significant implications for the overall pattern.

In addition to this movement of the Eastern Canada Block inrto central Canada… both models show the big trough over the eastern Pacific and Alaska — the Positive EPO (Eastern Pacific oscillation). Because this feature is so large and so powerful in both models the Ridge in the jet stream over the West Coast has been crushed or pushed east. Remember that it is the strong ridge over the West coast of North America which provides the flow of cold air from western and northern Canada into the central and eastern US . So by displacing this ridge to the central portion of the continent of cold air is locked up north of the Polar jet stream ( the northern black line).

The   southern jetstream however remains very active as you can see it has a pretty deep trough over the southeastern US on both models ( the blue shading over the southeast states). So while the pattern does not have a lot of cold air to work with it certainly is a very active.

We saw this happen at the end of December into early January. The cold active stormy pattern boat down because the locking Ridge over Greenland had moved into eastern Canada… which is an ideal position for East Coast cold and storminess — into central Canada. This of course shut off the supply of cold air which is one reasons why January over the Plains & Midwest in particular turned so amazingly more warm at the very cold OCT NOV and DEC. There was simply no mechanism …. no way for the cold air to get transported from Canada into the US. However the like retrogression in the oval pattern continued so that by the end of January the Ridge that was over central Canada reached western Canada. That re-establish the supply of cold air into the central and eastern US and allowed a new block of form over Greenland…. which has been the pattern since January 27 thru March 1.

　This next image shows the GFS at day7 jet stream map/ 500 MB. The light blue color shading shows the northern jetstream and you can see that the strong ridge over central Canada and the lack of Ridging over Western Canada. This shows quite clearly that all the pallbearers locked up north of the polar jet steam. The green shading shows you the subtropical jet stream and we can see a significant feature over the Lower Plains about move into the Delta. This is going to be a major springtime event for much of the Midwest and East Coast for March 11 — 12.

These next two images is show you the surface maps for this system. As you can see from the 0z and 6z GFS surface maps is a large system but there is no large cold High to the north at all. Wind are strongly out of the southeast feeding tons of moisture from the southwest Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico into the system as it tracks east.

0z  GFS  DAY 7

6Z  GFS  DAY 7

Finally let me just say that it looks like we will see the same sort of thing this time around .    The strong ridge over central Canada will continue to retrograde into Western Canada by the middle or end of March and reestablish the cold pattern.    Unfortunately for snow  lovers it will probably be too late for most of the nation for   additional winter weather but this re-establishing of the cold pattern will play havoc for agricultural interests in late March April and May.

Without a doubt the best thing you can watch during the morning hours on television is MSNBC’s fabulous show called Morning Joe. Not only do they have a wide variety of really fascinating guests but the political spectrum is pretty well represented by all of the regulars who participate in that show. The conversation flows smoothly and openly as if real people who actually have a clue are sitting around at the table when evening after a barbecue and talk about current events of the day.

This morning they had the Great Tom Hanks on the show who is promoting his new HBO miniseries/documentary called THE PACIFIC which premieres March 14 on HBO. It is done the same way the great miniseries BAND OF BROTHERS was made which is probably the best combat series ever actually made for any media anywhere in the world ….EVER! THE PACIFIC promises to be the same sort of thing and it is going to be very important because most of us who are not military savvy like I am are woefully ignorant about the exceptional ferocity and bloodbath which dominated the Pacific from 1941 to 1945. Not surprisingly Tom Hanks has landed on the cover of Time magazine with glowing attributes about how he bringing history back in the 21st century to Americans.

It turns out that Mr. Hanks is a fairly liberal man with liberal ideas which is unexpected coming from Hollywood. But he is very reasonable and doesn’t scream and he’s not the particularly strident . I am sure by now there is some sort of clip of the half-hour interview on Youtube or Meta Café floating around so if you get the chance you should watch it — maybe even on MSNBC’s web site. But any American in this day and age who goes out of his way to make accurate real history about what that generation went through and how we got to be who we are as a Nartion and people …is alright in my book even if he does have politically liberal leanings. There are a lot of worse things to be then a reasonable liberal like Tom Hanks is . I may not agree with his politics but anybody who puts that much effort into World War II history and what it meant and what it was like and goes out of his way to actually get it right is a darn good Joe in my book.

Mr. Hanks did confirm that his next project is going to be on the real story behind the assassination of JFK and that Oswald shot JFK. The Movie / miniseries is going to be based upon the fabulous book by Vincent Bugliosi they came out a few years ago about the real story behind Oswald and the JFK shooting. Sorry JFK conspiracy kook fans… Gerald Posner and Bugliosi proved that it was Oswald in the book depository with a rifle. Interestingly don’t know who Vincent Bugliosi is his most recent book was a far left the kook book about George Bush being prosecuted for war crimes. So I think it is pretty significant that a mainstream liberal like Mr Bugliosi has been honest enough to conclude as a brilliant prosecutor that he is… that Oswald killed JFK.