Last week's post, Michigan Weather Predictions Part-1, we talked about what all this warm, humid weather we have experienced this summer will equate to this winter. Lucky enough, Bill Steffen, Wood TV's Chief Meteorologist chimed in with an update for part-2. Enjoy and stay stoked!
Part 2: Winter Weather Predictions with Wood TV's Bill Steffen
Just a quick note to bring you up to date on general weather. The mid-Pacific centered El Nino of last winter has flipped to a moderate La Nina with colder than average water along the Equator in the Pacific Ocean. We also have a cold PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation). This will keep the West Coast cool and may act to hold a mean trough over the Western U.S. The water in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico is a little warmer than average; same for the Great Lakes. The potential is there for some decent lake-effect snow. However, many years when this happens, you get the lake cooling back to average before it is cold enough for lake-effect…or you get some lake-effect rain and waterspouts.
I think the early-mid fall will be a little warmer than average in the Great Lakes (more so in the southeastern Lakes). This winter should be warmer than last winter south of a line from about Pueblo, Colorado to Kansas City to Cleveland to Boston. It’ll be noticeably warmer this winter in Florida than last winter. The mean storm track will likely be into the Great Lakes. The word I am using for the winter is “volatile”. We’re going to see some mood swings…from warm to cold and back. There will be more storms with a mix of precipitation than we saw last winter and a little better chance of a freezing rain event. Snow will likely be heavier than last winter from the Pacific Northwest through the northern Rockies, northern Plains and into the U.P. Less snow will fall from Oklahoma and Texas to the mid-Atlantic and south of there. We’ll be in the middle – probably with average snow for the season, but a lot of up and down. That means the U.P., esp. the western U.P. should have a decent year…northern Lower will be OK and southern Michigan will have some melting periods. Don’t get discouraged if you get a thaw.
The last time we had a similar flip from El Nino to La Nina, we stayed warmer than average until mid-December. Then we had a decent shot of winter for about five weeks. We had 40” of snow in the first 12 days of January. Then it warmed and we had several major thaws in the 2nd half of January and early February. We got a decent 8” snowstorm in the first week of March and a cool week that followed.
Overall, the cold PDO and the La Nina should bring global average temperatures back close to normal by late winter/early spring. We have been warmer than average with the El Nino (every month this year has been warmer than average in G.R.). There’s a frost advisory for the outlying areas around Fairbanks, AK for Thurs. AM and I see that Oymyakon in Siberia was down to 26 on August 22nd, so some seasonal change is already taking place. I might add that a good number of climatologists continue to look at the low number of sunspots. Extended sunspot minimums in the past have led to slightly cooler global temperatures several years down the road.
I continue to believe that the most dire forecasts of global warming from carbon dioxide are exaggerated. Keep in mind that a small amount of warming won’t necessarily bring less snow. We saw more snow in the decade from 2000-2009 than any other decade in Grand Rapids history. We had more thaws than we did back in the 1970s (the coldest decade of the last century), but I continue to believe that we’ll get plenty of snow and plenty of days to enjoy it (the cold PDO, the probably cold AMO in 5-10 years and the sunspot minimum all lean that way) in the coming decades.
Good Luck to all this season.
Bill Steffen
Bill Steffen is the Chief Meteorologist for Wood TV8 in Grand Rapids, MI. You can catch Bill daily on Wood TV 8 in GR, follow Bill's Blog or tweet him up on Twitter at twitter.com/bsteffen