With all of these predictions for “La Niña Super Cold and Snowy Winters” people are starting to ask me what I think this winter might bring.
It’s a bit amusing because my Winter Outlook 2015-16 was just about as wrong as it could be. I think the only thing I got right was that winter would be slow to arrive. But then again, did winter ever really arrive?
Seriously… I think that winter outlooks are pretty meaningless. Even if you get the general idea correct, it’s impossible to nail the details well enough for any useful planning.
But people keep asking for winter outlooks, so who am I to disappoint?
Here it goes…
Looking to the Pacific Ocean:
The sea-surface temperature anomalies show a large blob of warm water in the northeast Pacific Ocean (warm PDO+) and a weak La Niña along the equatorial Pacific illustrated by the cooler waters:
To be sure, the strong El Niño that plagued us last winter is long gone:
So, I would say this winter should be a different animal than last winter based on the fact that El Niño is history. The warm PDO+ is a variable in our favor which tends to produce warming over the western United States and the resultant tele-connective cooling over the eastern United States in the winter.
Does La Niña promise a great winter?
The brutally honest answer: Not necessarily.
In fact, the historically strong La Niñas of 1973-74, 1975-76, 1988-89 and 1999-00 were not known for great winters.
I don’t like extreme El Niño or La Niña because both tend to screw up winter.
A weak La Niña that allows other factors to work in our favor tend to do better for us. Winters like 1995-96, 1996-97, 2000-01, 2008-09 and 2013-14 are examples of this.
But, winters of weak La Niña like 2005-06 and 2011-12 were lame, especially the later.
As you can see, the results are all over the map.
La Niña forecast:
The cluster of ensembles indicate that La Niña is likely to remain weak throughout the winter:
This seems to make sense with a large expanse of relatively warm water surrounding the core of colder water near the equator. If this holds, La Niña would be less likely to screw up our winter.
Modelology:
Here is a forecast panel from the CFSv2 model for December-January-February 2016-17:
I don’t want to read too much into a 3-month model outlook for two seasons ahead of us. But there seems to be a notable tendency toward warmer than normal weather in Alaska, perhaps due to the strong PDO+. Also, it would appear that eastern Canada could be reliably cold which may result in strong Arctic pushes into the northeastern United States.
This doesn’t knock my socks off, but it’s not a bad look either.
Bottom line:
That’s really about as far as I’m willing to dive right now. We’ll need to see how the snow cover starts to spread across Siberia into Eurasia once October rolls around. Yes… I realize that last October’s excellent spread of Eurasian snow pack did not translate into a good winter for us.
But…
- I believe last year’s super strong El Niño over-ruled some good factors for us.
- Much more often than not, Eurasian snow cover spread in October is a good indicator of a cold and snowy winter for us.
We can’t throw out a good correlation simply because it failed us miserably once. The super Niños come around once every 15-18 years. Next time it happens, I’ll just bet on super Niños to trump everything else. Then again, I might be dead or too old to care by then. Check back with me. 😉
I would say this winter will be better than last winter by simple default. If you draw a “2” out of a deck of cards at random, the chance of drawing a higher card the next time is extraordinarily high. We drew the “2” last winter, but are we going to draw a “4” or “9” or a face card this time? I honestly don’t know yet.
Update 9/11/16: I have started a Winter 2016-17 Outlook video series that I will update throughout the fall. I’ll track the developing features that may shape our winter.
Videos
[vsw id=”fvV2ZQmoXdU” source=”youtube” width=”525″ height=”344″ autoplay=”no”]
Winter 2016-17 Outlook, Part 1 – September 4, 2016
[vsw id=”p5RHFDqbBJg” source=”youtube” width=”525″ height=”344″ autoplay=”no”]
Winter 2016-17 Outlook, Part 2 – September 11, 2016
[vsw id=”ZxUtenWREhg” source=”youtube” width=”525″ height=”344″ autoplay=”no”]
Winter 2016-17 Outlook, Part 3 – September 18, 2016
[vsw id=”k9paNKGFis8″ source=”youtube” width=”525″ height=”344″ autoplay=”no”]
Winter 2016-17 Outlook, Part 4 – October 3, 2016
Leave your comments below and post some outlooks that you’ve seen on other websites so we can share a good laugh. 🙂
For the ilsnow nation,
Darrin
