The warm weather has quietly exited the stage, and yielded the floor to a more seasonal airmass today. A cold front slid through the area (sans fanfare) last night, turning our southerly winds around to the northwest. This northwesterly wind will slowly begin draining cooler air into the region overnight tonight, as low temperatures dip to their lowest values in nearly 15 days, (projected low tonight is 25, and the last time we hit that number was back on December 25th).

Winds will also remain active today, and some gusts to 20-25 mph will be commonplace until nightfall.

Where's the Snow?
While December averaged nearly 4 degrees below normal 30 year values (43.2/47.0), this was primarily due to an excessively cold period during the beginning of the month. Even though we are barely through the first week of January, we are nearly 7 degrees above average for the month. Troughs have consistently affected the region, but a lack of blocking (something to hold the trough's in place) has been all but absent. Thus, the troughs and associated cold snaps move out to sea without introducing the really "cold" wintertime temperatures needed for DC snowstorms. The cold air is then known as being transient as it lasts for a short period of time before progressing eastward in the mean upper level flow.

Furthermore, the overall structure of the jet stream favored storm tracks either too far south of the region, or too far east to deliver any measurable snowfall/precipitation.

But fear not snow lovers. There are some signs that would point to a progressively colder pattern developing towards the end of January. How cold it gets is still up for grabs, but I'd keep an eye on the weather forecast at the end of the month.

Blizzard of 1996:
For those of you who were in DC 10 years ago today, you may remember one of the most historic snowstorms in recent memory, not only for us, but for folks all around the northeast. Although conditions never really made it to "blizzard criteria" around the Capital, it came close.

Anywhere from 15-30 inches of snow fell between the 6th and 8th of January crippling travel around the region for the entire week.

I figured, if we can't get snow now, we might as well look back on memories of a historic snowstorm.

Image courtesy of Ray's Winter Storm Archive