ORLANDO, Fla. – It was nice to see the sun Wednesday after another gray and cold stretch. While the sun has returned and a warming trend will continue through Valentine’s Day weekend, there will likely be more cooler than normal weather in the near future.
The weather pattern that has brought us the cool and gloomy weather of late remains in place. While there will be episodes of nice weather, like the upcoming weekend, more often than not cool weather will persist.
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A large ridge of high pressure in the western U.S. has kept the cold air and active weather focused on the eastern third of the U.S., including Florida. This pattern looks to hold for at least another week to 10 days.
The ridge in the western U.S. is part of a climate pattern known as the Pacific North American pattern or PNA. When this oscillation is in its positive phase, warmer than normal temperatures are frequent in the west with cooler temperatures in the east. The opposite is true for the negative phase. Note the black line in top rectangle in the image below.
Since the middle of January, the PNA has been positive and is directly related to our chilly stretch of the last three weeks. The red lines are a forecast over the next couple of weeks. Most of the guidance favors a return to the negative phase.
Indications are that by the last week of February, the pattern will begin to transition to a warmer one. By the first few days of March, the pattern looks to completely flip, allowing for quiet and much warmer weather to return to the Sunshine State.
The colder air will retreat back to the Northern Plains and Pacific Northwest.