AccuWeather's long-range forecaster Paul Pastelok was live on the AccuWeather Network with a preview of the spring forecast on Jan. 30.
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00:00Joining me right now is AccuWeather long range, log range meteorologist Paul Pastelok here.
00:07And you know, Paul, before we get into the long range, the one thing that we've seen
00:12a lot of this winter is a lot of dryness across the country.
00:16I want to show you the drought monitor and kind of get your reaction to it.
00:20And again, that drought monitor, I believe this is the new one.
00:23It just got updated.
00:25And there's chunks of the country where it's at least dry or at least some drought to contend
00:32with.
00:33Yeah, you look at the northern high plains, Bernie, that's been a drought that's been
00:36going on since the fall.
00:38And we're seeing it in the southwest as well, which has missed out on a lot of systems during
00:42the course of the winter season.
00:4462% of the country right now has some drought compared to 38% at this time last year.
00:50So a significant difference going into the spring, which is something that the farmers
00:55don't like to see going into the spring season.
00:58And we've had problems along that I-95 corridor since the fall last year.
01:04Some relief, but then it's turned dry, although we do have some rain on the way.
01:07All right.
01:08A couple of days left in January.
01:10What can we expect for February?
01:12Well, a little bit of a change than we saw early in mid-January.
01:16The jet stream now going all the way back to the western U.S., they're going to start
01:21getting busy.
01:22They're going to start seeing some storms.
01:23In fact, the period between like the 4th and 8th or 9th of February could be very active
01:28in northern California and Oregon with some heavy rain and mountain snow.
01:31So very busy.
01:32You can see that dip in the jet stream there, but it loosens up farther east and that allows
01:36milder air.
01:37And, you know, spring is already getting a preview.
01:40You talked about the heavy rain near Dallas, starting to see that kind of situation.
01:44That's kind of a preview of going into the next several weeks.
01:47Also, we're seeing Denver, seeing snow today that could be in the 60s this weekend, as
01:51Tony was talking about earlier.
01:52So you're seeing the signs in the south of some milder air returning, and that big contrast
01:58is going to make things interesting from the Midwest to the Northeast, Bernie.
02:01Well, a lot of people – also, Paul, finish that statement out.
02:04In what way?
02:05Yeah, well, I think you're going to have a frontal boundary from time to time being
02:08in that area, and systems are going to come out of the west.
02:11They're going to kind of ride that front and move across the Ohio Valley to the Northeast.
02:16And if you're south of that front, you're going to get pretty mild.
02:18You're going to have some rain, maybe some thunderstorms.
02:20But north of that front, we're still going to be contending with snow and ice over the
02:23next several weeks in parts of the Great Lakes, Midwest, that hasn't had much snow during
02:28the middle part of the season so far.
02:30And that takes us to this graphic, Paul, where you answer the question, when is spring going
02:34to arrive?
02:37We know when it's going to arrive on the calendar, but how about from the weather standpoint?
02:41Well, we're looking at February, and it's early here.
02:44We're talking about temperatures even next week down towards New Orleans and the Southern
02:50Plains being in the 70s.
02:52And it can be consistently in the 70s in some places.
02:55Florida is the same.
02:56They've been dry, and they should shoot up into the 70s and 80s as well.
03:00So we're already seeing spring establishing itself in the south.
03:04Yes, there could be some setbacks during the course of the early spring period, but it
03:08looks like it's establishing in the south early.
03:10However, in the north, again, we just talked about this boundary setting up in the Ohio
03:14Valley.
03:15It will be sluggish.
03:16You'll get back and forth patterns setting up from the Great Lakes, northeast, some snow
03:19and ice.
03:20And also in the northwest, the Northern Rockies, not to leave them out, in fact, snow can get
03:24down to Seattle and Portland at some point here in the short range.
03:27We haven't seen much snow there so far this season, but I think we're starting to establish
03:31that the cold air and the stormy weather wants to go back to the Northern Rockies and northwest
03:36as we head into the first half of February.
03:39For Accuweather Lead Long Range Meteorologist Paul Pasluck, Paul, thanks for joining us
03:43here on Accuweather Early.