April 22, 2014

Next week it looks like we'll move into an omega block jet stream pattern. As we talked about in class the atmospheric jam brings prolonged cloudy, cool ,wet weather to areas beneath the storm part of the pattern and days of sunshine surrounding the storm. This pattern is common in April and May as the polar jet breaks off from the maritime jet.

Since the sun's radiant energy is fairly strong, the lower atmosphere can be warmed enough to produce gusty thunderstorms with hail. In areas from the Midwest to the South to along the Atlantic Seaboard, where the sun is out for a time on any day next week there will be a risk.

Current temperature is 55 F with dew point of 21 F. Winds are out of the northwest with gusts upto 23 mph. Barometric pressure is also high at 1018.3 mb.