Near surface air temperatures have been a struggle recently and the same goes for the air just a few thousand feet above our head. The featured chart displays a weekly climatology of 850 hPa morning sounding temperatures from the Omaha site. The black line is a time series for this year and the dip below the 5th percentile this past weekend coincides with the cold temperatures we have experienced. With such cold air above us, any heating the sun is able to do of the surface will likely drive clouds and as we experienced yesterday, convective snow showers. Having warmer air above our heads allows near surface air to warm to higher temperatures.

Voting:
Good = 16
Bad = 3
Abstain = 2

Tags:   sounding