Mother Nature seems a bit out of whack these days...last month, at times was more like late November...the forecast for the weekend is more like October...it'll happen in this part of the country and it's fun to track...although last month was a bit nutty with the long term chill...

So here we are not even through the first week of NOV...and temperatures are running close to 5 degrees abovee average, including today, and after a frosty morning out there...highs this afternoon have rebounded into the mid 60s and we should be able to tack on at least 10 to that tomorrow...as highs should be almost 20 degrees above average for the next couplle of days...the record on SAT is 78...and we should be very close to it, if not break it. It's all good...and I'm thinking about putting the Christmas lights out this weekend...usually I do it later in NOV when I can barely feel my hands after about an hour...something about putting them up now seems smart...although at least going by the EURO there really aren't any signs about prolonged cold heading our way for the foreseeable future...

Let's backtrack...here is a look at the latest surface map...showing the warmith continuing to build towards the S/SW of KC...where highs today surged well into the 70s...with even an 80 showing up in a few places...also look at Denver...last week flights were canceled because of the snow and wind...today they're well into the 70s as well...I'm guessing all that snow is long gone by now...

this warm bubble can easily been seen aloft as well...notice in the 48 hour NAM forecast how temperatures @ 5K feet are close to 20C/68F...

The contours at that level are leanig from the WSW to the ENE...this indicated a pretty dry flow of air at that level...now notice as we finish off the weekend...the adjustment to the way the contours are oriented...in this map more from south to north...and there are somes at least some low level moisture will start moving in from the GoM later in the weekend...how much of this translates into clouds remains to be seen...

There is going to be some sort of weak SW wave that gets kicked out by MON...so there is at least a chance there but it doesn't look overly impressive at this point but with dewpoints by then into the 50s...at least the chance is there for a light QPF event...but overall next week as well looks to be seasonal to mild...with NO surge of cold air heading our way...there may be another weak system THU or FRI of next week...there are some interesting things showing up on the day 10 GFS...but I don't really trust much "big picture" stuff past day 5 at this point...The EURO at it's ensembles are pretty mild for mid NOV...so we'll see how things pan out...

Onto the tropics where we briefly saw Ida spin up and intenisfy near the coast of Nicaragua yesterday...briefly attain hurricane status and now has started to weaken since it made landfall earlier this AM. Ida will skirt the coastal areas of Honduras at the beginning of the weekend and then potentially come back out in the westerdn Caribbean where the water is warm...and would potentially support intensification...

Remember Bill...here is a find for you...

This is a radar presentation of Hurricane Bill as an Air Forece Recon flight was checking it our...pretty cool stuff as you can see the flight path in relationship to the eye of the storm...Bill did at one point attain CAT 4 status...I believe by looking at the time staps this woould be 24 hours afterwards when winds were close to 100+.

And finally my friend Mark O' Malley from the NWS in Pleaant Hill has puit together an El Nino discussion and it's potential implications for the area winter forecast...take a look.

Joe