The eyewall lightning in hurricane Ian is incredible, almost completely wraps around the eye.

Intense hot towers continue to rapidly wrap around Ian’s eye with high amounts of lightning, this storm really just doesn’t care about the 20 knots of shear and keeps showing signs of strengthening. Really unfortunate to see this happening right before landfall.

Hurricane #Ian is making landfall near Cape Coral, Florida just shy of category 5 strength making it one of the strongest storms to strike the US. We will watch too see how much of it survives the trip over Florida as it might try to restrengthen a little afterwards.

Well it is becoming a little hard to tell where the center is exactly it does look like Ian may be tracking a little east of the forecast. Short term wobbles are expected over land but they can add up and will impact its potential after Florida.

Now that #Ian is back over water we’ll have to see if/when convection fires up near the center. As expected its structure took a major hit over FL so intensification will be slower but a hurricane warning was issued for the SC coast and its wind field has expanded significantly.

18z ATCF has upgraded #Ian back to hurricane strength and well it may not look like much on satellite it is important to note that it will have an atypical structure so it won’t look like a classic hurricane. Also recon will depart in 30-35 minutes which will be interesting.

Meteorological winter is just 60 days away…☃️

Let’s just take a minute to appreciate this persistent and strong ridging focused over Alaska for the entire run of the GFS. If we see anything like this return during the winter months we will be in for some fun times. 👀❄️

Why is this Alaskan ridge (-EPO) so important? Well it helps setup cross-polar flow which drives cold Arctic air down into the lower 48. Even in November a pattern like this will result in well below average temps. Let’s hope this is a recurring theme this winter.

At hour 144 on the 12z Euro you can see the cold air is in place but it keeps the southern wave a lot more strung out/flat than the GFS does. The CMC is on the Euro’s side right now but we will see how things trend.

As we head into December it is looking likely that a monster ridge is going to set up around Greenland tanking the NAO index. The NAO, EPO and AO all being negative is a great look for the EC, but the only issue is the PNA struggles to flip positive making the SE ridge a concern.

This is one of the most impressive ensemble runs I have seen in a while. We have all 4 major teleconnections (-NAO, -AO, +PNA, -EPO) lining up to deliver at the very least some cold air, but also the potential for snow even as far south as the SE. We will see. 👀🤞

It’s worth keeping an eye on the 7-10 day timeframe in the east as an active jet stream sets up with strong blocking to the north, a deeply negative -EPO and a clipper/Miller B type storm to bring in some colder air ahead of it. As always the track of this low will be key.

It is not often you get a pattern this favorable to come together especially around Christmas. Now this doesn’t guarantee snow in the southeast, but as shown on the 12z EPS the 23rd through the end of the month has potential. We just need everything to come together right.