I sure am getting lots of e-mail from people asking about the coming winter. Mild? Cold? Snow?
Long time readers know my distaste for seasonal outlooks; I generally don’t like them simply because there is little skill in such a task.
Many have asked if a long, hot, dry summer can give us a clue about the coming winter. Our associate, the great Alabama weather legend J.B. Elliott, has done exhaustive studies on this idea, and he found no correlation whatsoever. After some hot and dry summers we have had cold and snowy winters, but there have also been an almost equal number of mild winters with below normal precipitation.
We do note that we are now in a La Nina cycle, which would hint at a mild and rather dry winter for the Southeast U.S. That is what NOAA is calling for… in fact, here is some narrative from their outlook:
“In the first scheduled update to the 2007-08 U.S. winter outlook, NOAA seasonal forecasters say the latest data and model runs confirm their earlier prediction for above-average temperatures over most of the country and a continuation of drier-than-average conditions across much of the Southwest and Southeast.
“The prediction for a warmer than normal winter is still on course,†said Michael Halpert, head of forecast operations and acting deputy director of NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. “Our big concern continues to be the persistence of drought across large parts of the country’s southern tier. Nearly half of the Southeast is in extreme drought and water supplies have reached critical levels in some cities.””
Gut feeling here says NOAA is probably on target. In addition to the La Nina pattern, we are also in a warm phase of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), which is one of the primary reasons the Earth has been warmer in recent years (I don’t want to get into the “global warming” debate here, but that is a fact), and that in itself would suggest warmer than normal temperatures. But, a warm phase AMO doesn’t last forever, and there is little skill in identifying when the phase will flip to cool.
And, we must remember that we are statistically overdue for a cold winter, and more specifically, an ice storm. The last really serious ice storm here was in January 1982, and it will happen again. Those things are nasty, and can lead to power outages for weeks.
But, in answer to all of your questions, I really don’t know what the winter of 2007-2008 will bring. We will simply have to wait and see. Hopefully the next generation of meteorologists will have a better grasp on seasonal outlooks.
