Apr 9, 2012; 10:18 AM ET
Monday, 11:40 a.m.
Spring tends to be pretty windy on average. There are multiple reasons for that. One of the bigger reasons is that there is better mixing at this time of the year thanks to a higher sun angle. The jet stream has not come close to retreating all the way to its general summer position, so there is still a lot of wind blowing over our heads. With more sunshine and better mixing, those strong winds aloft can be brought to or near the surface much more easily.
Now when you combine that with a big storm and a big high on the weather map that are not too distant from one another, and you have a good reason to generate even more wind. After all, air wants to flow from areas of high pressure toward areas of low pressure. If you have a bigger high or a bigger low, or even both, then, all other things being equal, you'll see more wind being generated. And the closer you push these two systems together, that difference in pressure squeezed into a smaller distance will also lead to more wind.
Which brings us to the morning weather map, which has a large storm centered near Caribou, Maine, and another storm swirling around off the West coast. Between the two, high pressure has nestled into Arkansas, with an even larger high over the Northwest Territories:
There is a fair amount of moisture associated with the storm off the West coast, though that moisture will be slow to spread inland early this week. That translates to a couple of warm days over the interior West, and it will also be warm throughout the Rockies until a piece of this offshore trough rotates inland through Southern California tomorrow night and Wednesday.
In contrast, there is very little moisture associated with the storm over northern New England. What there is has been rotating inland from off the Atlantic through eastern Canada into New England and New York state, and this will lead to a lot of clouds along with widely scattered showers. And believe it or not, there can even be some wet snow in the mountains from northern New England into the Green and White Mountains.
This moisture, though, is pretty limited, and precipitation amounts will be minimal. In fact, with the wind, in most areas far more moisture will be evaporated than what will be gained through rain over the next few days. Look at all of the areas with a red flag warning:
Think about those red areas (red flag warnings for high fire danger) for a moment, especially in the East. Go back to last year. What happened? Record or near-record precipitation. That no doubt encouraged a lot of the undergrowth to flourish. Now go through the winter, and while it stayed wet early on, it dried out during the second half of the winter season. And there has been virtually no snowmelt this spring. Add to that the incredible warmth in March that dried things out further, and now toss in a lot of days on end with dry air and strong winds, and it's a tinderbox. Any little spark can quickly become a roaring brush or forest fire. Already we've some relatively small ones compared to what developed in Jefferson County, Calif. I fear more are imminent, as there should be so little rain the rest of the week.
The next big storm will come out of the West toward the northern Plains this weekend, but areas east of the Mississippi and south of I-70 will not get much in the way of organized rainfall. The best hope may come early next week as a cold front squeezes through the flow and tries to generate some rain and thunderstorms.
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