No doubt this summer has been a drastic improvement over last year's cold temps. The summer of 2009 brought us nothing but limited beach time, some rain and an overall 'eh' feeling. This summer has been hot and humid throughout much of the midwest and the rest of the United States. So what's this all mean come winter in the mitten? Lake effect snow and tons of pow? Mid-winter thaws and gnarly hero snow in February?
We recently took a chance and reached out to Grand Rapids' NBC Affiliate, Wood TV8, and their very own chief meteorologist Bill Steffen to see if he would give his take on what this hot and humid summer could equate to this winter.
Knowing that the local west Michigan meteorologists keep their winter weather predictions somewhat close to home until the fall, we weren't sure if Bill would step up and throw it out there. Fortunately, he did and has provided us with enough weather info to make your head spin. So we'll break it down into a couple parts and make it easier to digest. Enjoy and stay stoked!
Part 1 of 2: Winter Weather Predictions with Wood TV's Bill Steffen
Here's my snow fact of 2010: There was more snowfall in Dallas, Texas last March than there was in Marquette, Michigan. I'll give you ten-one odds that won't happen again in the next 100 years! We had exactly average snowfall in G. R. last winter (72.2"), but it was much less than the 100"+ winters we had in '08-'09 and '07-08".
2010 has featured a moderate, Pacific-centered El Nino morphing quickly to a moderate La Nina. We have a cold PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation) with cooler than average water temperatures from Alaska to northwest Mexico and we have warmer than average water temperatures in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. The winter that is most like what we have now is 1998-99. In that year it was relatively warm until the week before Christmas. Then we had about a month of decent winter weather. During the first 12 days of January, Grand Rapids had 40" of snow…mostly light, fluffy lake-effect and it never got warmer than 24. Then it warmed up and we actually had a high of 69 on Feb. 11. Keep in mind that while many factors are similar, others are different.
This winter will be colder than last winter in Alaska, most of Canada, the Pacific NW and along the coastline of California. It'll be warmer and less snowy than last winter south of a line from Oklahoma City to New York City. The storm track will be coming toward the Great Lakes. The key word for the winter is "volatile". This will be a winter for forecasters. We'll see storms will mixed precipitation and a greater chance of a period of freezing rain than the past few winters. Snowfall may be near or a little above average, but thaws will melt the snow on several occasions (we had a snow cover for much of the period from Dec. 4 to Feb. 28 with only Christmas Day and one Sunday in January reaching 40). Overall precipitation may be a little above average for the Great Lakes as a whole this winter.
That's what I see now.
Bill Steffen
Follow along as we uncover more weather predictions in part 2.
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