This week, the temperatures were higher in the morning compared to the afternoon. ABC 27 Meteorologist Dan Tomaso says when we think of the high temperatures in the afternoon, once the sun is up and warms the ground, the ground heats the air and that’s when we see the spike in high temperature. Following the movement of the air tells a lot about the upcoming weather pattern.
“So, this is all basically due to the balance of the jet stream. And so, when we mentioned the jet stream, the jet stream is just the main carrier of weather across the country and it's a zone of fast-moving winds. And it can meander, it can move around. And it sometimes is very straight across the country and sometimes it kind of snakes up and down. We were in a huge upswing of the jet stream as of yesterday, and that's what led to so much warmth coming from places like Florida, the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean. That was all allowed to flow in our direction. Well, now we're on the downswing and the downswing is really sharp this time around. So that allows cold air to basically replace the warm air. So, we go from one extreme to the next. Cold air comes diving in from the north, and all of a sudden, we start to get very cold. Sometimes we call this cross polar flow if it comes from the North Pole. But basically, that just means there's truly some Arctic air moving into the region.”
According to Tomaso, we are entering winter late. Compared to last December, this month is warmer and rainier than it’s been in the past.
“And so it really does shorten our winter in this area to January, February and maybe early March to see snow. I mean, it is very, very hard to get substantial snow any more in November in this region or excuse me, in December in this region.”