Pattern ..Where are We Going?

Before we can begin to look at where are we going we have to look at where we have been...

This is what the month of November looked like. As you can see we had some well below normal temperatures across much of the region. 
People keep talking about a pattern change...however...what they do not realize is that we have already had a pattern change...
Let me show you what i am talking about...

Quite a contrast from the month of November one would say for the first 4 days of the month of December.. The change in the weather pattern has been due to the exact same thing as last winter and that has been the return of the Alaskan Vortex. What this does is this keeps lower heights around Alaska and colder temperatures and warms up the USA (in general)..
So we have already had a pattern change but there are folks that are looking to another pattern change and this is to one of much colder weather.. And this is based on the American Model the GFS..
Here was the 12 Z 850 Day 11-15 temp anomalies 

No doubt about it that is COLD...
What about 18 Z? 

Not nearly as cold as the 12 Z but more normal temperature departures...
What about the 00z? 

Somewhat colder then the 18 Z but still not as cold as the 12 Z...And the ensembles for the same time frame..

Cold departures are kept over the Northern Plains and hint hint back into Alaska.

However , more important what about the change in just 12 hours from 12 Z to 00z in those 850 temperature departures?

Yup even the GFS guidance is getting warmer in the 11-15 day range time frame compared to just 12 hrs ago.

So now lets look at the ECM and we are going to look at the departure maps for the entire run minus 168 hrs because that image did not come out...

As you can clearly see the 850 mb temperature departures across the region are above normal and by 240 once again you see lower heights coming into the alaska area.
So the European guidance has a brief shot or two of colder air but mainly above normal departures and the GFS compared to 12 hrs ago has warmed up.

So we see what the guidance says but what do the teleconnectors tell us...

EPO is presently negative which can help to bring colder air into the USA but as you see it is expected to go positive. Which for colder air you would like to see a negative EPO sustained..

The NAO is essentially neutral to positive here...and again you want to see these charts showing the NAO in the negative column and you want to see this to get sustained cold in the area..

The PNA ..

The PNA is negative and pretty much other then a couple temporary spikes we look to be dominated by a negative PNA. 
With the alaskan vortex in place this will put places like Alaska below normal. With the - PNA this is going to center the cold from the Northern Plains into the west coast by putting a trough on the west coast into the northern plains region.

You can see that CPC is also on this same page as we are and again this is largely due to the teleconnections taking place..

And clearly you can see that Alaska and the west coast is colder or more normal while the east continues  to be in above normal weather.
Until that Alaskan Vortex is removed and we get switch to a west based - NAO along with a + PNA ..we will continue to run the risk of higher then normal temperatures with only glancing bouts of colder air.