The holidays make it hard to keep track of what day of the week it is. Mother Nature hasn't been helping with seemingly the same day for the past month or so. Storm systems roar onshore on the West Coast, targeting California recently, ride up and over the ridge in place around the Rockies. Eventually, they dive down through the Upper Midwest and Northeast. And we do that about every 3 days. We might have a different pattern coming. When stubborn setups break down, there can always be some downsides. Let's talk about it

SETUP

With persistent high pressure being hard to move, the warm weather hasn't been hard to find over the past few months. In fact, many saw their warmest December on record.

A strong trough will bite into our friendly neighborhood ridge, bringing back a stormy pattern to places that haven't seen much of it in recent weeks.

SEVERE

This strong trough will have more than enough wind energy and turning of the winds with hight to organize any storm that forms in the right location. The question is more about how much energy they get. This is pretty normal for a wintertime setup.

Right now, it doesn't look like a TON of unstable air to work with, which should limit the severity largely. However, it looks like enough ingredients will come together to see isolated severe storms.

The easier problem to find will be heavy rainfall. With a few rounds of storms likely, areas from the Mid-Mississippi River Valley to the Ohio River Valley could see flash flooding develop on Thursday.

SNOW..?

Hard to believe that temperatures in the middle of the week will be some 15-20 degrees above average, which will lead to POTENTIALLY winter weather. Some models have cold air wrapping around the area of low pressure and catching up to the moisture.

There are a ton of uncertainties with this; however, with multiple moving parts to follow, there is little we know for sure about the forecast. Stay with us as we iron out the details!