Pattern Update as Of Feb 4th 2013

The weather world all over is asking the question of where are we going..is winter over? Majority of winter has been above normal..the months of December and January. Many people hung their hats onto the CFSv2 which was showing a colder then normal January and this turned out to be the opposite of what the CFSv2 was forecasting.
Now we are starting to see that Feb is going to be colder then normal and snowier then normal. We have had a couple clippers that have dropped light coatings of snow but with the MJO moving thru phase 8 and now going to be making its way into Phase 1 ..we should be going into a moderating trend with the return of the SE ridge. 

Lets look at what we just came out of 

Rather cold pattern that we just came out of and indeed we had a stretch of about a week of cold weather , then a brief warm up and back to the cold weather... but now we are looking at the MJO moving into phase 1...

When we look at phase 1 we see that the coldest anomalies are in the southwest region into the west..

While in the east it becomes a warmer phase. Along with the warmer comes also a more active phase where the southern Jet stream has a chance to kick back into action but also with Phase 1 we see the Southeast Ridge come back into play and we are seeing that on the guidance . However before we get to the guidance lets look at where the teleconnections actually are..

NAO

The North American Oscillation is positive and its forecasted to go back down to neutral but then it looks to remain neutral to positive with a few members taking it neutral negative.

AO

AO is currently positive expected to go negative but then members are divided on whether we stay negative or go back to positive but at the present time the AO is positive.

PNA 

PNA is neutral positive and looks like it is generally forecasted to stay that way by looking at the image above.

Remember a negative AO means a discharge of cold air into the USA
A negative NAO means a colder pattern in the east 
And a positive PNA means troughing out east and ridging out west. 

With both the AO and NAO positive this means that temperatures are going to be moderating and with the PNA only neutral positive it means any troughs are not going to be deep in nature but rather more flat in nature with a progressive flow prevailing. This is going by the teleconnections alone ...
So now lets look at the guidance and we will start with the ECM 

You can see that the ECM is indeed forecasting the region to start warming up at about 144 hrs out and keeping the east coast under the influence of the southeast ridge. 

What about the GFS does this also agree with the ECM? 

You can see that the GFS is in fair agreement with the ECM in warming things up. This makes complete sense when looking at the teleconnections and looking at the phase of the MJO with it heading into phase 1. 

We also said it means a more active pattern ..Here is 192 hours on the GFS 

And here is 228 hours out on the GFS 

ECM also has a similar set up at 192 hours out ..

And a storm coming from the SE at 240 hours out..

So, indeed it looks like we are going into a more active period but with a forecast of warmer temperatures on the horizon we would be looking at more in the way of rainfall then snowfall (interior Northeast could be exceptions) 
You can also see that the Climate Prediction Center agrees with this thinking as well with there latest outlook for Days 6-10 and 8-14 ..

 So the groundhog could be completely correct about an early spring at least for the time being as teleconnections and guidance show a warm up on the horizon and a return to a more active period of weather.