Last Tropical Update of the Season? Also a Look at Other Weather

November 22, 2020

The tropics look like they're finally quieting down. The last area of interest we had in the Caribbean didn't materialize thankfully. You can see the NHC is watching an area off the East Coast. Development changes don't look very good but if something does develop it'll go out to sea. All other areas look quiet with nothing significant to note on the models. Several trusted sources seem to think we may be done for the year, let's hope so... Hurricane season doesn't officially end until the end of the month and we've actually had systems develop into January. All the same chances for a significant storm are rapidly diminishing. This will be my last update on the tropics unless something significant pops up. As I get time I may recap some of the interesting stats and storms from the 2020 season.

Up here in the mid latitudes we're starting to get into the typical winter weather pattern. Before we get to that, let's look at the winter outlook. The La Nina pattern that has been partially responsible for our active hurricane season will also affect our winter weather. Below are the winter temperature and precipitation outlooks from NOAA. The southeast is forecast to be warmer and dryer than normal for the period from December to February. La Nina doesn't always produce this pattern and seasonal forecasts can often be wrong, but this is currently what we can expect. Note that even if these forecasts are correct that doesn't mean that we won't get cold air or some good rain showers as the winter progresses.

Taking a look at the near term we'll have a series of fronts move through over the next 7 days. The first front is currently pushing south through northern AL and TN. It is producing rain but it is expected to dry out as it keeps moving south. The next system will come through about midweek bringing rainy and stormy weather. It looks like it'll clear the area by Thanksgiving morning but there could be a few lingering showers in the eastern Panhandle. After that a messy series of systems will approach from the west on Friday with rainy and stormy weather lasting through the weekend. Right now severe weather chances don't look too high but that is something to watch for this time of year. Some areas could see fairly high rain totals through 7 days, with most of it coming from the weekend system. Temps will dip a little as each front clears out but I don't think we'll get too far below normal this week. Around the first of the month we may see quite a big dip with low temps near freezing or below from Montgomery north and lows potentially in the 30's from there south to the coast. As we've seen in the past this info should be pretty reliable out to midweek but it is subject to significant changes beyond that.

That is all I have for today. Now that the tropics are quiet I'll reduce the frequency of updates to every week or week and a half unless extreme or severe weather is threatening.

Stay safe and have a great Thanksgiving.

Chris