THE CHOICE WAS EASY...

Hey everybody, I'm going to preface this post with the fact it's not up to my usual standards. The reason why is my daughter Eden. She was in the kitchen around 9:45 last night when she passed out and crashed to the floor. She free fell and hit her head on the floor with and was out cold for what seemed like a very long time. In reality it was probably 30 seconds but she was dazed and confused when she came around. She has no recollection of what happened. She had a significant bump on her head bigger than an egg and we made the trip to the emergency room. It was an easy choice.

We spent a couple hours there but outside of a minor concussion and a major headache she is safely home and resting. We have no idea what caused the fainting so that aspect of the event is still under investigation. The point in all this is that its approaching 3:00am and I'm basically mentally deprived. Due to that this will be a rather limited post. Here's what I have....

As far as the short term forecast goes, it's pretty much the status quo the rest of the week. Above normal temperatures will prevail and precipitation remains an endangered species. A few showers are possible early Wednesday but they look very light and scattered. Anybody that sees as much as 1/10th of an inch would be doing really well. Tuesday will be the 17th consecutive day with no measurable precipitation in the Quad Cities. It will be 18 straight days in Burlington and for the month as a whole the total there stands at .17 inches there. Wow!

As for temperatures, the EURO shows 50s Tuesday and Wednesday with a high near 60 in Cedar Rapids Thursday. Similar readings can be expected around the rest of the region just a few degrees cooler in the north.

Those highs near 60 Thursday should be 20-25 degrees above the averages for December 2nd. Ugh!

After that, a cooling trend commences over the weekend but readings will still be close to normal. Sunday and Monday look the coolest with readings potentially in the 30s. After that, it sure looks like temps. are going right back up and we could get pretty toasty by next weekend December 10-12th.

I am here to tell you beyond mid December it's a low confidence forecast. There are a lot of assumptions and contradictions on the table. This has the potential to go really bad for me if the La Nina is just too strong and disrupts the MJO amplitude and phase correlations. Already the ensembles show lots of variability and I don't like that spread because it leaves plenty of room for error. I'm not quite ready to throw in the towel yet but my winter outlook from September for a cold December is in serious jeopardy based on everything I've seen tonight. If we do get the cold, it will not be until the 3rd week of December and by then it's too late to compensate for the warmth that preceded it. I'm really distraught at how things are lining up tonight.

I guess I will end it there for now after a long night. Happy last day of November. Meteorological winter starts Wednesday. You will be hard pressed to know it by the temperatures. Roll weather...TS

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