Warm in the West, COLD in the East. Hasn’t locked in like this over the US since way back in the winters of ’62-63, ’76-77 when old man, “Polar Vortex”, the circulating hub of cold air in Northern Hemisphere winters, lost his way from near the North Pole and drifted down to around Hudson Bay, Canada, a few times, as it is doing at times this winter.
You can read about those January’s, ’63 and ’77 below for those of you who like to reminiscence about severe winters in the East.
The weather and circulation of January 1963
The weather and circulation of January 1977
You may recall, too, that it snowed in Miami in January 1977, the only time it’s happened. They got pretty excited about it down there, too, as you can see. 
That snow in Miami, BTW, occurred pretty much at the height of the global cooling hysteria (hahaha–I like to tease those who think there wasn’t any. But…..we REMEMBER!) Furthermore, one of the great climatologists of the day, Hubert Lamb, from East Anglia University, was even predicting a new ice age dead ahead in the 1970s. Oh, well. I’ve made some pretty bad weather predictions myself.
Fortunately, our current pattern, replicating those old ones, goes to HELL by the end of January, and our chances of rain go way up. Below is the totality of the evidence I am going on for this weather assertion:
As you can see above, or maybe not, the entire central and eastern Pacific are in complete disarray, and the standing pattern we have now “will not stand” much after this.
Let us compare what we have now, and will have for the next ten days or so, below:
In the first example, very few red and blue contour lines follow the predicted yellow brick road lines. Those red and blue lines are, in general, no where near the actual “control” yellow lines representing an actual prediction for those contours.
In the second example, way out to ten days, the red and blue lines follow the “yellow brick road” ones, meaning the forecast, even that far out, is very robust. So, for another ten days we’ll have our peaceful weather, but watch out toward the end of January. “Change gonna come.”
The End. Might check back when it starts raining….
