From one of my favorite professionals Bobby Martrich at EPAWA on the upcoming milder but not torch pattern before cold returns.
"A lot of talk recently about a Christmas week "torch" and yes, there have and will be changes to the late next week period to just past Christmas that will take us out of the tank where we've been for much of December, and moderate the pattern. The culprit is a nearly 5 sigma high pressure/ridge over the Bering Sea, which was poorly modeled last week, and responded to a combination of a Scandinavian blocking pattern and the EAMT that retracted the Pacific jet too far... allowing this ridge to pop over the Bering Sea. If you watched the WW video last Sunday when I had
@ShaneMartrich
on, he talked about his research and lack of data in the polar regions. This may be one of those cases why the models and ensembles had a knee-jerk reaction this week. Kind of their version of an "oh crap" moment. By doing so, it turns the EPO positive, so the cross-polar flow is temporarily shut off. But for transparency, this is far from a "torch" pattern for us. Milder than now, yes... but aside from a synoptically-driven spike ahead of a cutter near the 18th, temperatures return closer to average instead of 15-20° below like they have been. This will be temporary, and may last more than a week, then colder returns late month and January."