6 more weeks of winter? Or not?

Punxsutawney Phil has seen his shadow this morning, so we're looking at six more weeks of winter... right? Well how about the Southern variation of Phil, Gen. Beau Lee - "Georgia’s Official Weather Prognosticator?" Gen. Lee did NOT see his shadow this morning, indicating an early spring! While Phil may be o-"phil"-cial, Gen. Lee is southern, so I think Lee trumps Phil in this game of rodent-prognosticating!

The National Weather Service may tend to agree too. Check out the maps below showing the expected departures from normal for temperature and precipitation for the month of February. They indicate a high likelihood of a warmer (in the Lower MS Valley much warmer) February than average, while below normal temps would be confined to the Northwestern states. The Midwest looks like it might have a wet month, while in the northern half of the Mid-South, precipitation could end up slightly above normal. The shaded bands indicate a 33%, 40% and 50% chance of above (or below) normal temps and precip. So while it doesn't mean we won't see some cold weather, chances are decent that our average for the month will end up above average. Bring on Spring!

This week's weather (post #200)

First off, welcome to post #200 on The MWN Blog! I'm glad enough people look at this to make it worth my while to post 200 times in the +/-11 months. Thanks to all of you who follow this blog on a routine basis. I have discovered one thing - school closings are very important to you all! Last week when I posted on area schools being closed due to the snow (BTW, I recorded 3/4", while the official reading for Memphis was 1" at the airport), this blog recorded just shy of 1,000 visitors on one day and almost 1,500 over two days, with over 2,500 pages viewed. Thank you!

Now on to the stuff you really want to know about. I haven't had a lot of time the past few days to post, so I'm one of the few in the region that has not talked about our chances of winter weather this coming week. It's a good thing too... Late last week, models were hinting at (OK, they were pretty much insistent on) at least a little bit of snow tomorrow morning. I carried it in my MWN forecast. It's now been removed, though a shot at light rain showers remains likely. The next chance is from a clipper system on Tuesday that looked like it might be a flurry-maker, or perhaps bring even a few snow showers. Well, I'm less confident on that now too. So while I still have a slight chance of snow in my forecast for Tuesday, that may have to come out by tomorrow too. It will definitely be colder than this weekend though (hasn't it been gorgeous!), so prepare for another round of cold weather early this week.

The good news is that the long-range models that had been predicting much wamer temperatures for the first couple of weeks in February now seem like they were on to something. I expect a pattern shift to occur after the middle of this week and we will start to see warmer, and likely more moisture-laden, air masses dominating the Mid-South as we head into next weekend and the following week. That doesn't mean we won't get a cold snap, but the main storm track appears as though it will favor warmer weather. We'll see how this plays out. Maybe Mr. Groundhog will be able to tell us tomorrow morning! I'll let you know what he says.