Day 88: West Coast Cyclone

Posted by pmarsh on 29 Mar 2010 | 0 comments

A strong cyclone is currently located off the coast of the Pacific Northwest.  This cyclone is helping / will help to carve out a substantial trough across the western United States.  This trough will help to build a ridge downstream over the eastern United States, which will result in near normal to above normal temperatures throughout most of the week for the a large portion of the eastern two-thirds of the United States.  It has been a long time since the eastern two-thirds of the United States was under a ridge of any substance for any appreciable amount of time.  Hopefully this means that spring is here to stick around for awhile.

The image below (a favorite of mine) shows that the Gulf of Mexico is currently being scoured of moisture and the Caribbean doesn’t look much better.  Because of this, I’m concerned that moisture will be *relatively* hard to come by this weekend.  This would lead me to more of a potential widespread rain/thunderstorm event than a significant severe thunderstorm event.  However, far southern Texas could potentially see severe weather Friday evening.  Moisture won’t have nearly as far to travel…

Only time will tell.

Time permitting, I plan to do a more detailed post tomorrow looking at the forecast for Friday evening.