Star Date: 9 Feb 2016 Tuesday

Captain's Log
2-WEEK OUTLOOK:

This week (9-15 FEB) overall is cold East, warm West but the nation as a whole trends 10th coldest and 3rd driest of the past 25+ years. The Clipper remains disorganized so no big changes to the snowfall totals in the East. Most areas are 1-3" across PA-NJ-NYC with a couple heavier areas around Harrisburg PA to west of Philly where 4-5" is possible and 4" on Long Island. Hard to call this a storm but more of an on-and-off squally bursts with the mess moving out tomorrow morning. Then the Arctic air invades the entire East Coast with middle 20s as far south as Ocala, Florida with some hard freezes in the Sunshine state Thursday morning. Valentine's Day weekend is the coldest period in the Northeast and then temperatures begin to moderate quickly.

Next week (16-22 FEB) the nation trends the warmest in 18 years (3rd warmest of the past 25+ years). This is a big change from last year when much of the nation was parked under the Polar Vortex with near record cold - not this year. El Nino conditions are fortunately keeping the weather pattern very transient and fast moving so nothing has locked in this year and thus the big warm ups, cool downs and warm ups all season long. Precipitation does increase from California to New England so we'll have to watch a couple bigger snow/rain storms especially in the Great Lakes and interior Northeast. TBD on the coastal NE as tracks could favor snow to rain events.The bigger potential storm events are around the 15th-16th in the Great Lakes and Northeast, 17th-18th rain/snow returns to California and the another big storm possibeagain around the 20th-21st.

Visit our facebook fan page for maps summarizing the next two weeks.

To see how your 14 days trend inourcool line chart formats visit http://www.weathertrends360.com/Charts