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Despite January typically being the most frigid season in the Eastern US, a strange pattern in the jet stream will see the first month of the year bringing milder temperatures East of the Great Plains. Here’s what you can expect to see in the forecast in the weeks to come.
As the jet stream sweeps from west to east across the US, it’s currently making a southerly dip across the Western US into Mexico before surging back north across the Plains. By doing so, it’s helping cold air in the West stay unsettled, while also helping to bottle up the cold air from Canada.
This, in turn, means that the West Coast and Canada are having colder than average January weather, while the East Coast is sailing by with mild weather. This is because the western dip of the jet stream to the south is pulling cold air out over the West Coast, while its northern bulge over the plains is dragging warm air up from Mexico to cover the East Coast.
This means that competing cold and mild air clashing in the atmosphere over the Midwest is likely to bring about notable storms. Thankfully, due to the current weather pattern, it’s unlikely that these storms would bring snow or ice with them as they move east.
Instead, due to the jet stream’s current unusual positioning, any storms formed by mid-January are likely to simply carry heavy amounts of rainfall with them to the Great Lakes and East Coast. This coincides with a roughly fifty-percent chance of above-average temperatures in the Southeast through mid-month.
Historically, January is the coldest part of the year for most of the East Coast. Snowfall totals and average low temperatures tend to be at their most intense during the month of January. This negative phase of the jet stream, then, is allowing the Southeast and New England a much-needed respite from the cold they could typically expect this time of year.
Whether this mild winter will continue into February and March remains to be seen, but, for now, the East can expect cloudy, rainy skies and above-average temperatures.
