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.
Weather Watch
March 5, 2009
Weather Watch
- Weather Watch
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- Weather watch The Susquehanna River level will be unusually low for the General Clinton Canoe Regatta during Memorial Day weekend.
- Weather Watch It’s really uncanny how the very dry weather pattern has continued in this area despite the succession of major storms that have moved to the west and south.
- Weather Watch Now that north has become a synonym for sunshine and south has become a synonym for rain, there’s no way that this extremely dry weather pattern can change at least for the next four weeks.
- Weather Watch March was the third straight month with below normal precipitation, and it looks like April will also turn out to be drier than normal.
- Weather Watch Temperatures were near normal in March, with precipitation around an inch below normal.
- Weather Watch On Friday a major storm will move to the Ohio Valley, while high pressure builds southward from eastern Canada. Skies will be partly sunny with highs from 55 to 60 degrees.
- Weather Watch When it’s warmer to the north and cooler to the south, it’s so easy to get into an extremely dry weather pattern in Otsego County. The weather forecast in last week’s weather column was more optimistic than other local weather forecasts, but the weather was actually much better than even we predicted.
- Weather Watch The jet stream will shift southward this week and a series of low pressure systems will move well to our south.
- Weather Watch 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.
- Weather Watch Exactly as we’ve been predicting for the past month, this is turning out to be an exceptionally dry February - one of the driest on record in central and eastern New York.
- More Weather Watch Headlines
