The combination of a northwesterly flow aloft and a
series of Alberta clippers, will maintain a cold weather
pattern in Otsego County through this second week of
2009.
Temperatures will average a few degrees below normal,
but there is no very cold arctic air in sight. Northwesterly
winds will bring a few lake-effect snow showers
on Friday, otherwise we’ll get intervals of clouds and sunshine
and highs in the mid-20’s.
Skies will be mostly cloudy on Saturday with a fastmoving
Alberta clipper that will bring mainly light snow,
generally around 1” to 3’ across most of our region; highs
in the low 30’s. As the storm system intensifies over the
Canadian Maritimes on Sunday, a northwest flow will
take over with variable cloudiness, some sunshine, and
highs only 23 to 28 degrees.
With high pressure over the Great Lakes, Monday will
feature partly to mostly sunny skies and highs around 30
degrees. Another fast-moving clipper will bring mostly
cloudy skies and a few snow showers on Tuesday, with
highs near 30 degrees.
During the first six days of the brand-new year, each
day the weather was better than most local weather forecasts
had indicated. A classic example was on Sunday and
Monday, when skies were supposed to be mostly cloudy
all day. The strong northwest wind on Saturday was indicative
of an intense storm way up over Labrador, and
the wind was a signal that the low would effectively block
the next storm system moving eastward from the mid-
Mississippi Valley.
Sure enough, as the north Atlantic storm moved very
little, and a narrow ridge of high pressure building south
from James Bay to the mid-Atlantic states, maintained
very dry air, while the western low moved into the Ohio
Valley.
In the Cooperstown area early morning lows were
around zero degrees, but skies were sunny through the
morning and early afternoon, then partly sunny with only
some high, thin cirrus clouds, with a high in the upper
20’s. On Monday, cold, rainy weather in the Dallas -Fort
Worth was an important signal for clearing skies in Otsego
County.
A cold front moved through the area during the early
morning hours, with very light freezing rain, then a
northwesterly flow of much drier air took over.
Mark Hanok is an Otego-based meteorologist. You
can visit him on the World Wide Web at http://members.
aol.com/weathergazette.
