Every winter, a sort of pattern emerges across the CONUS (Continental United States) with a series of semi-regular cold fronts passing through the nation with effects stretching across the entire nation. These cold fronts can vary in strength, and they can cause events ranging from tornadoes in the Southeast US to blizzards in the Northeast and Midwest. As can be seen in the figure below, we have one of those fronts set to pass through Brevard County within the next 24 hours. With this front we can expect temperatures to drop from the 69°F forecasted for Monday afternoon to 60°F forecasted for Wednesday afternoon.
When it comes to such scenarios, the student meteorologist has several tools to play with there's the
AMS DataStreme,
NOAA NCEP, various private firms like
Weather Bell, programs such as NMAP2 and the
Integrated Data Viewer, and university pages like the Penn State
Weather Wall. This only scratches the surface of the incredible domain of tools at your disposal. I personally prefer the Integrated Data Viewer for my own personal use when looking at models, and NMAP2 for looking at satellite.
Analyzing the systems associated with the cold fronts, however, is a mix of dynamics, synoptics, and everything else you've ever learned about the weather.
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| 500mb isoheights (white) and absolute vorticity (color shading; red max, dark blue min) for NAM Conus from 1/25/15 1800Z to 1/29/15 600Z, forecast issued at 1200Z on 1/25/15 |
From the above image, one can see the white 500mb isoheights. From basic synoptics, one can surmise that is a surface low pressure system to the southeast of the 500mb trough. Further, from knowledge of vorticity dynamics, a vorticity maximum can be observed located slightly to the right of the base of the trough. The vorticity increases over the next 18 hours, an indication of a strengthening surface low, with is accompanied by a deepening 500mb trough.
Going again to dynamics and atmospheric physics courses, I provide another image above. In this image, the purple wind barbs are the 500mb winds, and the yellow barbs are the 700mb wind barbs. As one can see, the 500mb winds are rotated counterclockwise from the 700mb winds. In short, the winds are backing with height, an indication of cold air convection.
So be prepared for it to be a bit colder. Fronts like this one are typical of this time of year, so for the duration of the CONUS winter, pay attention to systems to notice little facts like this. This was just a small example of the some of the meteorological observations one can make using the Integrated Data Viewer. Explore what's out there, and see what you can apply to these events!
