Here We Go? | First Breaths of Spring '26 Could be Near!

I've fallen into a nice routine over the last decade where I fly through my busy work-travel season speaking about weather at conferences and winter meetings which usually spans the 6-8 weeks immediately following the holidays in January and February and then eject on the other side into the ass-end of winter and hope to be staring down an increasingly active, and increasingly interesting storm track across the Central U.S.

Here we go?

The last 4 weeks have been crazy on my end. From January 4 to January 29 I think I spent 5 or 6 nights in my own bed. It seems like my talks all cluster themselves in some region of the country every year, and this year it happened to be the Dakotas. Three flights to Fargo in three weeks in January, good thing this has been one of the coldest winters in the last few years. Blessed to have experienced -25 deg F air temperatures and ground blizzard conditions... Dakota winter experience, unlocked! It was a great few weeks with a bunch of really nice conferences spread out across the Dakotas and Upper Midwest with a finalè in Ohio. I've got a few more dates spread out across the Great Lakes and Midwest but most/all are out-and-back types, not involving flights, hotels, and week-long absences from home. From now into the summer, my busy work stretches will mostly be dictated by active/busy stretches in North American weather.

Here's a little glimpse into my last few weeks of travel:

I got home at the end last week and spent part of the weekend peering into the long-range for any hope of a break from this persistent pattern that has featured a ridge across western North America with polar-vortex enhanced troughing across the Great Lakes. The result has been unrelenting cold, dry air... record-breaking cold at times, but a clipper-laden pattern that's not resulted in much in the way of classic winter storms. Saying that feels goofy given we're way above average for snowfall in my backyard and surrounding portions of central Illinois, but it's been done on the back of a couple early season winter storms in late November and early December and an unorthodox over-running moisture event that brought 8" of dry, powdery snow Jan 24-25.

Ultimately, I ended up getting my feelings hurt. The models seemed locked into the idea that at the very least, eastern North America troughing would negate any attempt by troughing to the west and any sort of warm-up or shift in the storm track.

What a difference a few days makes, I guess.

The EPS and GEFS along with the EPS/GFS extended range are now going pretty hard after a period of western U.S. troughing and southwest flow across the central U.S. allowing for a warm-up east of the Rockies, and likely, an accompany active storm track.

Flipping from ridge west-trough east to trough west-ridge east allows us to tap into the Gulf of Mexico and begin transporting moisture northward ahead of each hypothetical storm system. Instead of moisture-starved clipper systems bringing reinforcing shots of cold, dry air we shift into big mid-latitude cyclones drawing warm & humid air northward from the Gulf. The first breaths of spring!

Open Gulf and northward transport of moisture combined with an active storm track in mid-February?

The immediate questions that start getting ask are "does this mean snow?" "does this mean severe weather?" "does this mean rain?". It probably means all of that, to an extent. Details with each individual storm system will determine the answers to those questions on a near-term basis as we get closer, but the broad idea being thrown out there by longer-range guidance is that by mid-February we may be headed for a pattern we've not really seen since spring '25.

Big low pressure systems rolling out of Texas or Colorado, lifting into the Great Lakes with rain/storms/potentially severe storms in the warm sector (climatologically this would favor the Ohio River/Lower Mississippi River Valleys into the Gulf Coast states) and impactful snows on the cold/north side (climatologically this would favor the Northern/Central Plains into the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes)... a little something for everyone.

An active storm track is becoming increasingly like in mid-late February from the Plains into the Midwest, but it's not clear yet whether that means winter storms, severe storms, or heavy rainfall. Could be all of the above, could be that storm track/storm evolution favors one or the other, or struggle with all of the above!

This is a severe weather and storm chasing blog first, so yes, I'm obviously going to have an eye on the warm side of any of these hypothetical storm systems. At the moment, no particular day or system jumps out at me with any sort of consistency. That said, I wouldn't be all that surprised if we're doing a couple of days of organized severe thunderstorm risks from the Red River to the Ohio River down to the Gulf Coast somewhere from Feb 11-25. Some of the ensemble members certainly hint at a viable warm sector with CAPE as some of these early systems roll through.

It's not yet worth diving into this pattern shift with any more specificity but this is exactly where I want to be in the first week of February. Does a long-range outlook that looks stormy mean much at this range, at this time of year? Not really... but it's better than unrelenting Arctic air and a snow pack that refuses to melt. I don't hate winter, but the harsher it is the more eager I'll be to see it leave. Consider me good to say goodbye to winter 2025-26 any day!