By MARK HANOK
Exactly as we predicted
at the beginning of the
month, it was one of the
driest Februaries on record
in Otsego County and
throughout most of central
and eastern New York.
Thanks to the extreme
upside-down temperature
pattern with much warmer
weather in Montana than
in Georgia, and strong
winds on Monday and Tuesday,
an extremely dry
weather pattern will be the
theme for at least the next
two to three weeks.
Although the arctic cold
at the start of the month
will be replaced by mild,
spring like weather this
weekend, we’ll get very little
precipitation during the
upcoming week - only some
light mixed precipitation
Thursday night and early
Friday morning as a
warm front moves through
our region. The jet stream
has been diving southeastward
from central Canada,
bring unseasonably cold air
during the first four days of
March.
However, we’ll get a major
change in the upper-level
wind pattern, with a
zonal, west to east flow
across the northern half of
the nation.
A warm front will bring
milder air as it crosses our
area on Friday morning,
with light snow, sleet, and
rain - but we’ll be lucky to
get more than a tenth of an
inch of precipitation.
Partial sunshine will
take over on Friday afternoon
with highs in the mid-
40’s. An upper-level trough
over the western Great
Lakes will continue a mild
southwesterly flow on Saturday,
with partly sunny
skies and highs in the low
50’s. As the low slides eastward
on Sunday, northwesterly
winds will bring
cooler air, but we’ll only get
back to normal for early
March.
Along with variable
cloudiness and intervals of
sunshine with the chance of
rain or snow showers, highs
will be around 40 degrees.
Skies will be partly sunny
with highs from 40 to 45 degrees
on Monday, then
mostly sunny and 45 to 50
degrees on Tuesday. No return
to arctic cold and no
snowstorms anywhere in
sight.
Mark Hanok is an Otegobased
meteorologist.
