Winter Wonderland?
Just as Christmas ornaments are starting to crowd out the Halloween decorations, ice scrapers and snow shovels are appearing among the rakes and leaf blowers.
How much use they will get this winter could depend on which forecast comes closest to being right.
If you ask Lee Hendricks, a meteorologist with the Pittsburgh office of the National Weather Service, there's a chance that a warmer-than-average winter awaits the Pittsburgh area.
The Old Farmer's Almanac 2019 forecast is similar, said Ben Kilbride, an editorial assistant with the almanac based in Dublin, N.H., and in its 227th year.
“For your area, it's going to be warmer than normal this winter,” said Kilbride.
“Remember, it's still winter, but it will be a few degrees warmer than average. And it's going to be a normal amount of snowfall,” he said.
“The middle of December to early January and then at the beginning of February will be the snowiest periods,” he said.
Kilbride said the almanac forecasts the coldest weather from around mid-December into early January and then late January to early February.
“As for a white Christmas, it looks like there is a pretty good chance of it,” Kilbride said.
National Weather Service meteorologist Hendricks won't pin it down that close.
He said, “What we do is basically a three-month outlook for November, December and January.
“We are looking at a 33-percent chance of above-normal temperatures for this period, and there is little indication one way or the other on precipitation,” he said. “We are looking at the overall atmospheric patterns across the Northern Hemisphere.”
But there is a glitch in this balmy forecast.“While it is looking like it is going to be warmer than normal, you have to remember what normal is for this area.” warned Hendricks.According to National Weather Service records, the average monthly high temperature for November is 51.2 degrees, and the average monthly low is 34.7 degrees.Hendricks said of November, “We average 3.23 inches of precipitation for the month and 2.1 inches of snow.”December's average high temperature is 39.4 degrees and the average low temperature is 25.3.“December showed 2.85 inches of precipitation. Weather tends to be drier in the winter and 8.3 inches of snowfall,” he said.January's average high is 35.7 degrees and its average low is 21.1 degrees with 2.7 inches of precipitation and 11.5 inches of snow.Hendricks said last winter's snowfall was above average.“In December, we had 13.3 inches of snow. The normal is a little over 8 inches,” he said.January saw 17.2 inches of snow, while 11.3 is the average snowfall for the month.As for the rest of the seasons, Hendricks said it was warmer than normal last year, and it has been warmer than normal so far this year.“Since January, we've had 46.64 inches of rain. The normal amount is 31.47,” said Hendricks. “In 2017 there was 35.61 inches of rain.”Hendricks blamed some of the heavier-than-normal rain amounts on this area being lashed by the remnants of the season's last two hurricanes: Florence and Gordon.And all the talk of an El Niño, the warming of the Pacific Ocean said to affect weather patterns, also doesn't signify much, Hendricks said.“The El Niño this year started in early October. Right now, the indices are looking like there's not going to be a very abnormal warming of the ocean temperatures,” he said. “It's not looking like there is going to be a powerful effect right now.”
“But predictions for El Niño and La Niña (a cooling of the Pacific waters) take a lot of feel and personal skill, rather than black and white tools to do that,” he added.While the almanac's meteorologist takes El Niño's appearance into account, Kilbride said its calculations also use the sunspot activity that almanac founder Robert Thomas believed influenced the weather.“We still believe that today. The more sunspots there are, the warmer the planet overall,” he said.He said sunspots wax and wane every 11 years and right now we are at a low point in the sunspot cycle.However, Kilbride said, “We have very few sunspots and we are predicting milder temperatures.”“There has to be another influence, and the only influence we can think of is us,” he said, saying the almanac now must figure in man's activities into its weather calculations.“We use climatology, the study of prevailing weather around the world; meteorology, the day-to-day study of the atmosphere; El Niño; 30-year averages and we also look back on our own records,” Kilbride said.The almanac claims an 80 percent success rate.But it's not just weather predictions that have made the almanac popular for the past 227 years, said Kilbride.“There is more than just weather. There are stories about farming, history and gardening,” he said.The almanac has a Facebook page, a website and a downloadable digital format.Kilbride said people who want a printed copy can go to www.almanac.com/wheretobuy.The almanac has evolved since 1792 when Thomas, a Massachusetts farmer, printed 3,000 copies of his first almanac containing weather predictions for 1793.
