Updated at 4:40 p.m. EST on December 5, 2022
Once a week we show many of the actual forecast maps not just provide the links to these maps. This makes it easier for the reader. Our report provides a separate forecast for Days 1 and 2, Days 1-5, Days 6 -10, Days 8 – 14, and weeks 3 and 4. We also include a next-day and 10-Day Global Average Temperature and Cumulative Precipitation Forecast. This provides information that is useful to readers in terms of planning their activities for the weekend and the next 28 days. I will update the article with more recent short-term forecasts: Saturday through Monday
We see the expected movement of cold air from west to east of the pattern described in our prior Friday article and perhaps the area impacted shrinking in Weeks 3 and 4. It is quite similar to the overall Outlook predicted when the December Outlook was updated on Wednesday. Precipitation is expansive at first but the southern tier drought pattern gets started in Weeks 3 and 4. We had concerns about the 28-Day Outlook last week and did an experiment where we added the daily updates of the 6 – 10 and 8 – 14 day forecasts each day through Monday. We did not learn too much but I think we are seeing that the forecast last week may have been just a little bit early with its forecast as the flow seems smoother this week. But it may be that they actually nailed it last week. The maps are easy to read. But the maps reflect compromises by the forecasters. They are dealing with conflicting results from their various tools. But they can only produce one map (or that is all they issue). There is a discussion for the 6 – 10 day and 8 – 14 day maps but I do not include them to keep the size of the article reasonable. The links provided would take you to those discussions except on weekends as they are not issued on weekends. I could update those maps on Mondays (like I did last week) but it is a lot of work for me and most readers would not come back on Monday to see the comparison and I am not always available to do an update when NOAA issues their Monday version of the maps with their discussions until later in the day. But the links are there for the curious.
When we publish on Friday night, it provides a 28-day view of the future. What is important is that this is a longer-term view than one that is typically available in the Media and online. The amount of information about weather provided to the general public is quite limited. It is available to the public. But most do not have the time or level of interest to seek it out. My articles are at an intermediate level between what is generally available from the Media (ten-day forecasts and a good explanation for the first couple of days and the information used by meteorologists to produce these forecasts for general distribution. So I focus on longer timeframes and more depth into why the forecasts are what they are.
