The atmosphere has been in a bit of a swing over the last few weeks, often flipping from cold to warm within a  span of 5 days. In fact, several weeks in the last few months have featured dramatic temperature swings in either direction. This week will be no different, as we will start the week with temperatures slightly below normal, but warm up to above normal by Wednesday afternoon. The culprit is a mid-level ridge in the atmosphere, building ahead of a disturbance in the Central US. The warmth on Wednesday could be pronounced in spots, with temperatures again reaching into the middle to upper 50's. It will be short lived once again, though, as a surface cold front swings through shortly thereafter. By Thursday and Friday temperatures should be below normal once again -- with a chance of rain and snow showers as well. In summary -- we'll have a little bit of everything on the table this week. Certainly won't feel like much of a change -- this has been the tale of the winter so far! Featured right: NAM model showing temperatures near 60 degrees Wednesday afternoon ahead of a front.

A final note -- we're nearly finished with  our storm summary for the January 21st, 2012 snowfall event which impacted our area just over a week ago. We'll be posting the details..including a map and storm total snowfall reports in the coming days. We wanted to thank everybody who submitted a report or observation to us during the storm. Although the contoured snowfall maps aren't released yet, you can still check out the Winter Storm Archive 2011-2012 which is available to the public. We've updated the archive with all the articles and forecasts we published from the event -- and the two other events this winter. Enjoy!

Article written by JH. Published January 30th, 2012 at 12:59am. For up to the minute details on forecasts, watches, warnings, and alerts, follow us on Twitter and Facebook.