It's been a while since I've had a chance to throw out any thoughts regarding the medium/long range, but really there hasn't been anything that has significantly changed since my last post in the summer thread from mid-August. The pattern we have seen dominant much of the summer was expected to continue through the end of August, and it ended up doing so. For the first half of September, a variation of this same pattern has continued...Though with a bit more troughing along the West Coast at times and a few transient bouts of ridging up in the Greenland/North Pole area at times.
We are finally going to see a significant change coming up shortly, but it appears as though it will be short lived. As is being mentioned by many, we are looking at a warm up for late this week through the first half of next week across a good chunk of the sub-forum. This warm up will bring a re-introduction to temperatures into the 80's/90's for many for a several day period. This warm up will be a product of an increasing -PNA/West Coast trough, one of the most significant we have seen all summer. This will pump up ridging across the Central/Southern Plain, Ohio Valley and Southeast...Leading the the aforementioned period of warmer/hotter temps. Beyond this time (After mid-next week), like clock work it appears we'll head back into some variation of the dominant pattern we've seen much of the summer.