Mild and Wet Rest of February

Remember that 3-5" snowpack we acquired last week? Yeah, this is just about all that's left in my neighborhood:

If it weren't for snow piles from shoveling our driveways, we wouldn't have a sliver of snow left. Temperatures since February 9th have gone above freezing every day, and I've seen 0.34" of rain also. Rain, humidity, warm temperatures... that's a perfect recipe for some serious snow eating.

And to be honest, I'm not sure if we'll see a steady snowpack any more this winter. That doesn't mean we won't see snow, but the sun is rising higher in the sky, fighting back the arctic air and leaving the chances of a true cold snap pretty slim for the coming weeks.

We've switched the east coast pattern to warm for the foreseeable future. The next 5 days at least are showing above normal temps. That's because we have a pretty persistent high pressure setup over the Atlantic, pumping warmer air in and forcing storm tracks up and over the Great Lakes region:

Late February is a prime time for one of those sneaky southern lows to dump on us, but with a pattern like this we have no shot at that. As I've illustrated above, most storms that would normally drop out of the Rockies and head our way, are now being forced well west of us. As we know, being on the east side of a low is always wet.

That's what we can expect the next couple days, too: wet. We have a couple of systems that'll take this exact track and leave us "warm sector'd," with the potential for some minor flooding, too. I think some areas of southeastern Ohio could see up to 3" of rain between now and Saturday morning. Our ground will be pretty saturated from snow melt up here in Central Ohio, so if we got close to that, we would see some more serious flooding. Luckily down by the Ohio River, they had far less, if any, snowpack at all to saturate the ground.

I think most of Central Ohio will see closer to 1.5" of rain, but I wouldn't rule out some isolated areas of heavier precip in Fairfield County, which will be closer to the heavier areas of rain. I also won't rule out the occasional rumble of thunder sometime tomorrow evening! For storm lovers, this is just a tease of what's to come this summer.