Warm, unsettled westerly weather will dominate in the Alps. With fresh winds and a high snow line, minor disturbances will keep moving through, initially on Friday night and Sunday. Otherwise, it will be reasonably bright and, as mentioned, warm. The westward slide will continue into next week. The possibility of a downstream development from the middle of next week is a reason for hope, but as usual this is still very uncertain.
Winter Storm Jonas
It doesn't really want to stay wintry here, but all the more so elsewhere. "Winter Storm Jonas" has been making the headlines in recent days, causing large amounts of snow and even greater excitement in the eastern third of the USA. "Jonas" is an unofficial name given by the American television station The Weather Channel. Usually only hurricanes are given their own name, but even a snowstorm can be better publicized if it has a snappy name. In the current case, in addition to Jonas, Ajax, Goliath, Ursula and Yolo were also in the Weather Channel's selection. We are particularly looking forward to the hopefully imminent arrival of Storm Yolo. Jonas, also known as Snowzilla or Snowmageddon, began its journey as a shortwave trough on January 19 on the northwest coast of the USA. From there, it moved southeast and developed into a rather weak low pressure area over Texas on January 21, which then gained considerable pow(d)er on January 22 with the help of another low over the states of North and South Carolina. As it became stronger and stronger, Jonas moved up the coast and brought traffic to a standstill over large areas. A low that moves north along the coast and always has the warm Atlantic to its right and cold, continental air to its left is of course a very good recipe for intense precipitation.
Effects
Jonas finally said goodbye to the Atlantic. There it tattered somewhat and only much less spectacular, but still wet and windy, remnants reached the British Isles yesterday. In the USA, 42 deaths are attributed to the effects of the storm, including some heart attacks while shoveling snow. Over 10,000 flights were canceled and almost half a million people were temporarily affected by power outages. The clean-up operation is still ongoing. In addition to the not-so-fun consequences of the storm, there was also some good news, for example from Tian Tian, the giant panda at Washington Zoo, who is happy about the fresh snow:
In addition, there were and are of course snowmen and snow fights in Times Square, in NYC and Washington people are busy skiing in town and a tiny bit of envy may also arise among one or two Alpine residents in the face of such cheerful screaming:
Many a ski resort would be delighted:
This animation shows the snow depths in the USA over the last two weeks. The arrival of Jonas on January 22 is nice to see.
Cold in Asia too
Much less is heard about the equally unusual cold in parts of Asia: in Hong Kong, temperatures have been just above freezing for the last few days, the coldest in 60 years, and the situation is similar in Taiwan, Vietnam and some regions of China. In Mongolia, -46°C was measured. This is due to a cold blob from the wavy polar vortex, which extends far to the south. In Baku, Azerbaijan, wintry weather is not all that uncommon, but this pretty scene of city traffic is still worth seeing.
Here's a nice photo collection of Storm Jonas, for anyone who wants to do a little dreaming.
