Arctic Cold Pattern Shifts to a Warmer Regime

23 Feb 2021, 7:00 am

After weeks on end of brutally cold weather over the Central United States, we’ve gone into a nice pattern change that’s ushering in warmer conditions. The arctic jet stream that usually resides well north of the U.S. rotating around the arctic circle, has returned to its usual location. This allows the polar and subtropical jet streams to steer our weather pattern through the Continental U.S. over the next couple of weeks.

This will keep the most frigid, arctic air located in Canada and points farther north for the time being.

High temperatures to finish the week will be above average for many east of the Rocky Mountains. What you WON’T find in the forecast for these selected cities, are forecast high temperatures BELOW freezing!

A pattern of storms in the Western U.S. will keep temperatures a bit below average, BUT won’t be influenced by any arctic air so don’t anticipate any extreme cold outbreaks here any time soon either.

Even further out, temperatures are forecast to stay above average through the next 1-2 weeks east of the Rockies. In the West, colder than normal temperatures are expected.

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About the author

Devon Lucie

Devon is a native of Macomb in Western, Illinois but has made his travels across the country from Las Vegas to Washington, D.C. with stops in Tulsa, Little Rock, Kansas City, and Salt Lake City. His passion for weather developed at an early age and can be traced back to when he was 5 years old and dressed up as a walking tornado for Halloween. His college education came through the Universit... Load Morey of Oklahoma where he completed his B.S. in meteorology with a minor in math. Devon has been through weather extremes from 110°+ heat in Las Vegas, to 3 feet of snow in Washington, D.C. where in his first winter experienced the all-time record snowfall for the season (winter of 2009/2010)! He’s also chased tornadoes in Oklahoma and saw his very first off of I-70 on the front range of Colorado.