Mild Conditions Par for Course in November

You likely might have noticed that the weather has been rather warm of late throughout Monmouth and Ocean Counties of New Jersey.  Temperatures have soared into the 60’s for highs this week, even a few 70’s have made a return to the Garden State!  

So what exactly is going on here?  Why has New Jersey seen a winter storm in late October and weather conditions more like mid May in early November, all in the span of three weeks?  Is the atmosphere out of whack?  Is there a problem with the Earth’s climate?

Nope, this is just the result of the Madden-Julian Oscillation which is basically a measure of thunderstorm development along the Intertropical Convergence Zone.  The Intertropical Convergence Zone is where winds from trade winds at the equator converge which leads to rising air and therefore thunderstorms.  These thunderstorms can have a major impact on the weather patterns in North America, and of course our home town.  Once again, a thunderstorm in the Pacific can have a fundamental impact on our weather pattern. 

There is roughly a seven to ten day lag between the position of the MJO and the resulting pattern impact on the East coast.  I want to be clear here that a complete break down of the influences of the MJO would take several pages and several hours to completely break down and the state of the El Nino Southern Oscillation would be a key influence on the impacts from the MJO.  For this discussion though lets establish the known impacts of this MJO/La Nina state:

For MJO states 7 through 1: a trough is likely in the East

For MJO states 3 through 5: a ridge is likely in the East

For MJO states 2 and 6: pattern change likely, very stormy

Now, with these know factors above, you can clearly see over the past 90 days that when the MJO has been in phases 8, 1, and 2 that we have seen some of our worst storms including Hurricane Irene, several rain storms, and of course the unusual snow storm on October 29, 2011.  Notice that the MJO has gone through phase 3, 4, and traveling through phase 5 all of which support a ridge in the East and would certainly support the mild weather conditions that has been in place.  

The good news is that this warm pattern should continue for another week or two.  The bad news is that the party is going to come to an end by the end of this month as the MJO travels into phased 7 through 2.  One very important point to take from these observations is that the MJO is much stronger and much slower to move through the phases with a trough in the Eastern United States.  This factor is important to remember as we move forward over the next 3 months with the winter pattern.