ORLANDO, Fla. – You’ve likely heard by now, there’s a cold front coming. Is this a signal of winter’s resurrection? Or just a brief snap as spring tries to battle it out against cold trying to surge southward?
Let’s travel through the “forecast funnel” together.
Next Monday, our next frontal system arrives in town. Overnight Monday into Tuesday, we’ve got the potential for some frost and freezing feels-like temps.
The following morning, we’re likely to jump 10-12 degrees out of the wintry hole and back into average temperatures for the remainder of the week.
This is absolutely normal during a period of time called “transition season.” You’ve probably heard this a few different times if you’ve followed along this seasonal projection parade.
What ends up happening during this period is a bare knuckle brawl between winter and spring. We lose the ability to maintain steady winter conditions, and spring can’t hold on for too long when it tries to arrive ahead of schedule.
As we lose balance over the northern hemisphere, we’ll see periods of excessive heat and flashes of cold weather that end up flipping back and forth repetitively.
If you look at forecasted temperatures for next week, we come down quite a bit Monday night and Tuesday morning. But by Wednesday, 70s return. Thursday? Forget about it, computer models are highlighting a potential of low 80s in the Orlando area.
The culprit here isn’t winter itself, but rather the intensity of our low pressure that’s going to yank the cold down. Which makes sense when you examine the science behind these winter storms.
They feed off differing temperatures.
Over the weekend, Central Florida is forecast to warm up to near-record if not record-breaking highs. Up north, our jet stream is going to start tugging a slug of colder temps down south.
This sharp contrast between warmer-than-average and colder-than-average temperatures is the perfect combo to spin up a nasty winter system.
It looks like we could see two more jabs of cooler weather in town before we really start feeling the brunt of spring. Feb. 23-25 has been on the radar for a bit, and then the first week of March could hold another winter wake-up for us.
A larger puzzle piece we can look toward when determining if wintry weather will officially invade, or if we’ll simply see glimpses of the passing season is our arctic oscillation.
When this variable is negative, that usually means our polar vortex is getting aggravated and will likely send some freezing temps our way. A positive phase, as the name implies, keeps it “happy” and undisrupted.
Now headed back down south, the big-picture pattern over North America, subtropical ridging looks to be stubborn and try to hold on to its grasp of the south and east as it extends up out of the tropics.
Your key takeaway? You’ll be smacked by some frigid temps early next week.
But, rest assured we won’t be hovering in the winter-sphere for long. The battle has only just begun, so I’ll be closely monitoring the progression of things through the end of February and the first half of March.