I’ve always liked that line from Shakespeare “Now is the winter of our discontent” in the opening of Richard III.

Despite another one of those meaningless low end snow chances this weekend for far North Georgia there’s no real winter to hang our hat on anytime soon.

Despite a handful of intense but brief cold snaps and a few snow flurries here or there we have certainly thus far had our second consecutive “year without a winter” here in Georgia.

Regardless of what happens later this month or in March it will go down in the books as a warmer than normal winter.

I continue to ignore hints from the computer models of any significant or lasting cold unless or until I see something more convincing.

Probably a little more than 50% of the time a warm winter will be followed by a late cold snap in March or April, and sure I’ve seen it snow real snow in Atlanta in both of those months, but I would never count on it.

Seems I’ve been posting new blogs for weeks now indicating I see no snow storms for Atlanta for the foreseeable future and I have to say it again.

The new base state of the climate has made it harder to get lasting cold and snow in the Southeast in the winter months even despite multiple years of a quiet sun and with a sunspot minimum upon us.

All but one of the last 6 years were snowless through at least December. Yet there has also been a tendency in the 2000-present range for March and/or April to be cooler than average in the mean.

AVERAGE OF LAST TWO MARCH TEMPERATURE DEPARTURES FROM NORMAL:

We can hope for a surprise but this dud of a winter for snow lovers is more likely than not to conclude the same way.

Should easily go down as a top 10 warm winter in Atlanta, maybe even a top 5 in some parts of the Southeast U.S.

It also looks like the above-normal rainfall pattern will continue all month and next month with frequent systems coming along with plentiful rain, and elevated severe thunderstorm risks thanks to the mild temperatures and the main jet stream storm track lifting over us or nearby just to the Northwest.

Based on measuring demand for heating it looks like on a national basis January was the 3rd warmest since 1950. IF current trends continue this month it would go down as the warmest winter since 1950 on a national basis.

Using temperatures alone going back to at least the 1920s for the Continental U.S. the combination of December and February comes out just shy of half a degree warmer than any other period in the record books beating out the winters of 1933 and 2005.

There have been only a handful of true old fashioned winters in the Southeast the past couple decades.

At Hartsfield December was +6.1F and January +5.9F.

Not surprisingly the trees are responding with leaves and buds 2-3 weeks early in much of the South:

It’s amazing too since so many of the worlds Oceans were in a Sea surface temperature anomaly pattern that matched cold and snowy winters from the past, but the atmosphere (stratosphere to troposphere) failed to respond in kind this winter as it did in the past.

As a result we have not been able to get what we need for true Arctic air (cAk) to arrive and stay a spell, that is blocking of the jet stream (-NAO/AO) and/or a tall high pressure jet stream ridge on the West Coast (-EPO/+PNA). Instead, since late December the AO/NAO have been in a POSITIVE phase 80% of the time and the -EPO and +PNA have been nil.

(NCSU graphic)

(Graphic from AMS Monthly Weather Review)

(Graphic from senewmexicowx.org)

To be more precise, it’s worth noting that the various indices described here are MEASURES of the atmospheric phenomenon not a CAUSE of it.

KEY INDEX MEASURES AND WHERE THEY ARE LOCATED (CAN BE NEGATIVE OR POSITIVE IN PHASE):

We’ve had some 6 weeks in a row where at least on average the configuration has been +EPO/-PNA/+NAO/+AO, no wonder cold air just comes and goes.

The strongly positive IOD (Indian Ocean Dipole) has impacted the MJO (Madden Julian Oscillation) in a way that has not been conducive to favorable behavior in those key jet stream regions shown above, as the energy flow from the Asian sub-continent region has destructively interfered with dateline forcing from a weak Modoki El Nino in the Pacific ocean. As a result every time the pattern attempts to set up a significant and lasting cold pattern it gets pushed aside by big Pacific moisture and energy.

So there has been a lack of high-latitude blocking with a persistent Southeast high pressure ridge influence from around Cuba into the Southeast U.S and a continual redevelopment of a subtropical jet stream from the equatorial Pacific Ocean while the stable circumpolar vortex has anchored the polar jet stream closer to the Canadian border.

This allows for an active pattern of mid-latitude cyclones (low pressure systems) with a track from Texas to Maine and occasional Miller A Gulf Coast storms that lack cold air.

IF we do not develop a viable El Nino this summer the SE ridge of winter may flex its muscle this Spring and Summer and reverse the wet pattern and bring on more heat.

For more follow me on Twitter @MellishMeterWSB.