After freak snowstorm, East Coast prepares for ... balmy weather?
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Talk about flip-flopping.
Only days after a freak pre-winter storm blanketed the Northeast in snow, Accuweather.com is predicting a serious — and well deserved — warm-up for the eastern half of the country.
Beginning Sunday and continuing through Wednesday, temperatures could climb into the 80s in the South and into the 60s and 70s in the Midwest and Northeast, according to the weather-forecasting service.
In a news release, AccuWeather.com describes the abrupt change in temperature as a ‘weather pattern flip,’ attributing the temperature fluctuation to a northward bulge in the jet stream combined with an increase in high pressure at the surface.
In an interview with The Times, meteorologist Brian Edwards explained that high pressure at the surface means you have sinking air -- ‘and that spells a lot of sunshine and clear conditions,’ he said.
There is a chance this warm spell could be thwarted by low clouds originating in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as local breezes coming off large bodies of water. But otherwise, those on the East Coast and even into the Midwest can put away their snow boots for a few days and pull out the jean jackets to enjoy some of what will most likely be the last warmish weather of the year.
(Those of us in Southern California will just keep our mouths shut.)
And just to recap what folks in the Northeast have been through already: The unusual late-October storm dumped as much as 32 inches of snow onto some parts of New England. The storm was particularly damaging because the heavy, wet snow fell on trees that had not yet lost all their leaves, causing branches to break off and thousands of power lines to go down.
At the peak of the outage, 2.4 million people in the region were without power. School was canceled and airports were closed. Authorities have blamed the storm for 25 deaths at last count.
Also, the storm forced the cancellation of Halloween trick-or-treating in some areas.
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--Deborah Netburn
