May Will Start Cold For Millions...

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]If you are in the north and you are thinking about planting, think again. A big chunk of colder air is getting ready to blast through most of the country to start the month of May. I'd love to know if you're rooting for the chill or you want some of the warmth. Post in the comments what the weather is doing where you are tuning in from. All of this blue and purple that represents below normal temperatures. The darker the purple, the more below average it is. So, let's bring the dabber out and you see just for some perspective where the purple is anywhere from 15ish to 20ish degrees below normal. So, a nice nasty chunk of some colder air, a little bit warmer than normal for us in the Pacific Northwest. But it's not just that it arrives in the first few days of May.

[00:00:42]It's repeated rounds of the colder air.

[00:00:44]This is through May 7th. A reinforcing shot into the east. Maybe not as cold, but we are going to keep that conveyor belt of some pretty chilly air open.

[00:00:53]That refrigerator door to Canada is going to stay open a little bit warmer relative to normal for us in Idaho back to the Pacific Northwest. All right, if you are in this blue shaded area, this is where the frost and freeze potential lies from May 1st through the 4th. I would definitely not grab the shovel and start planting things just yet. is we might not be done even after this round of some colder air from about the Twin Cities of the Arrowhead of Minnesota down the Appalachins through Virginia and then into New England. That is where that big frost potential resides. I'm going to show you some of the temperature forecasts in just one second. The reason it's this very wavy jetream, we talked about this in a video weeks ago that the polar vortex would have its hand in delivering May a very cold start. Here it is. Let's bust out the teleustrator. We do have a dip in the jetream into the west, but here it is. That big chunk of low pressure chilling outside of the Hudson Bay. All of this purple is uh the dip in the jetream here delivering the colder air to the surface. And you see it in motion. It just kind of hangs out there around the Hudson Bay and it kind of retrogrades back in between the Hudson Bay and the Great Lakes. There it is.

[00:02:07]and it just keeps on sending a steady stream of colder air across the Great Lakes into the Mid-Atlantic and into the Northeast especially. We do have that ridge of high pressure building once again and that is going to keep us warm in the west and then all of that cold sping up and over the ridge through at least the first week of May. So, pretty remarkable stuff. And you see it continues through May 12th, especially into New England.

[00:02:38]That big dip there is going to keep things safe from Scranton to Buffalo to Syracuse and then Northeast pretty chilly relative to normal. Meanwhile, the rest of the country is starting to warm up as a ridge begins to build across uh the west and that's going to pump up the temperatures big time for us there. I want to show you the low temperatures.

[00:02:59]These are the This is the forecast now for uh Friday, May 1st. This is 7:00 in the morning. So, those are the low temperatures. 20s in International Falls, 40s in Pittsburgh, 41 in Detroit.

[00:03:11]We'll take this forward. It gets even colder across the Great Lakes region into May 2nd. Look at that. New Mexico, Santa Fe. We're at 37 when you wake up on Saturday, May 2nd. 35 in Pittsburgh, 39 in Detroit, 33 in Green Bay, 40s in Rowan Oak. And then as we take things out into Sunday, May 3rd, we're keeping the chill. So again, there's that multi-day frost and freeze risk really through about May 4th. And then I think we start to warm things up, relatively speaking. Anyway, high temperature forecast. It's wild. 50s for highs.

[00:03:46]These are high temperatures. If you're new to this map, if you're new to the channel, this is one of my favorite maps because it kind of shows tells the weather story here. And anywhere there's a blue box, that means we have below normal temperatures. anywhere there's an orange box, it's above. If it was red, we'd be talking about records. If it's gray, we are average. And you clearly see the amount of below normal temperatures that we have all the way from Tucson to Chicago to Boston to Charleston. That's on Friday. And then that pushes further into the south.

[00:04:17]We're talking lower 70s in New Orleans.

[00:04:19]I mean, it's nice and comfy. But then you do see the warmth try to build once again as we work our way into the west.

[00:04:27]Again, this is something that we've talked about at length over the last couple of weeks that we likely be dealing with these rounds and rounds of rainfall, these rounds and rounds of colder air going forward. Um, and we're going to continue to watch that. Now, one of the things that are going to it's going to come with this is the potential for some rain, especially across parts of the deep south. This is going to take you well into the future. And I think that's where as we look towards May 5th through May 11th, we did our May outlook as well. That video will be uh coming up in the ED card at the end of this video.

[00:05:02]But you see where we finally get some green back in the west. Now, we desperately need the moisture into the west. Sorry for my friends in California. My head is covering the state. There we go again. Above normal precipitation forecast for May 5th to the 11th. that's going to kind of string out across parts of the deep south and as we move into the northeast that is where we're going to keep things keep the tide at least on the wet side and that is directly related of course to that big dip in the jetream that pretty much stays there locked in until the about the 12th of May before it departs.

[00:05:41]I'm going to show you this again because we're adding the preip side of this.

[00:05:45]It's also going to keep the active storm track. So, we're talking about how watch it retrograde again. This is through May 6th, May 7th. There's the area of low pressure. We'll send this back into motion. And I'll show you it. You'll see exactly what I'm talking about. There it is. That big bowling ball that just kind of hangs there. That's through May 12th.

[00:06:02]So, as the ridge builds here, we have this big storm track. And this is kind of the atmospheric conveyor belt, the atmospheric treadmill. So that all of that chill, all of the activity is going to stay in that direction. So not only is it going to be cooler than normal, it is also going to be uh wetter than normal. And again, the Climate Prediction Center forecast is going to reflect that as well as we move to not only the first week of May, but getting into the second week of May. So it's going to stay pretty active at that. Now, looking out even further, this is for the next three months. This is uh kind of just issued and we talked about this in the May forecast, but this is where the tide starts to turn a little bit more as we try to focus on the wetter things into the east. I've had a lot of questions from my friends in the desert southwest. Okay, is the monsoon season going to kick in? We need the moisture. Well, here it is. We have the green popping back up. And I do think because of the heat early on, we might be able to induce the monsunal moisture again switching the wind flow as the wind kind of blows comes out of the Gulf and then it transports that moisture from the Gulf back over into the desert southwest.

[00:07:20]That is where I think we're really going to see that change going forward is once we start to get into June. I think we'll see an early onset for the monsoon season. Obviously, the issue has been the snow pack, but again, we will take what we can get in any kind of form of the moisture. But boy, in the short term, major pattern flip as we were talking about the chill. There it is.

[00:07:42]Friday, May 1st, all of that blue. All righty, guys. If you are new to the channel and love staying up to date with the weather, love being part of the weather conversation, you've come to the right place. Join our growing subscriber list, do me a favor, hit that subscribe button, and I will catch you guys in the next video.