Accuweather Winter Forcast

[sectachrome]

November 16, 2006 - The AccuWeather team has been researching what this upcoming winter will hold and a big key is the fact that we expect a weak to moderate El Nino.

 

During El Nino years we get a more active southern jet stream meaning more storms moving through the southern U.S.

 

With warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic this will allow for storms moving through to gain strength rapidly.

 

As a result we could have several classic Nor'Easters to deal with during the upcoming winter months.

 

This is the type of situation that allows us to watch a Nor'Easter forming all the way down off the coast of southern Louisiana and then wrapping up around the Carolinas and off the Northeast coastline.

 

Now the other ingredient we need is the cold air to get snowstorms out of this and it appears the mid winter pattern may indeed provide that as the jet stream could dive unusually far south in the eastern half of the country.

 

What this means is an increase in snowfall for the southeastern U.S. and up through the Mid-Atlantic region.

 

It also could lead to an increased chance of icestorms as you get the cold air entrenched at the lower levels of the atmosphere and then the coastal storm wraps in warm air in teh upper levels of the atmosphere so you get liquid precipitation falling into a cold layer at the ground where it freezes on contact.

 

Hopefully we will not get much in the way of ice as it is worse than snowstorms to get around in.

 

So what does this all mean for our upcoming winter? It means here in Philadelphia we expect snowfall to be about 125% of normal or around 25.6" of snow for this upcoming winter. Normal is 20.5".

 

Temperatures across the entire viewing area will be slightly below normal (around 1 degree) when you average out the whole winter.

 

In the Lehigh Valley, you can expect around 40" of snow and in southeastern NJ and central DE you can expect near 20" of snow.

 

There will definitely be wild swings of temperatures throughout the winter so some periods will be mild, but others distinctively cold and during those colder periods we will see our chances for snow.

 

So stay tuned as it looks like we will have a challenging and exciting winter season.