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Forecasters butt heads over U.S. winter outlook

U.S. forecasters are at odds over how cold and snowy the coming winter will be, with predictions ranging from frigid to mild in the key Northeast and Midwest heating regions.

The murky outlook follows last year's surprisingly balmy winter, the warmest on record, which caught most meteorologists off guard and triggered a free fall in natural gas prices that hurt consumers with locked in supply contracts.

"It looks like another year without consensus," said Matt Rogers, forecaster for EarthSat.

The bone of contention between the weather-watchers this year is the nascent El Nino, a warming trend in the equatorial waters of the Pacific that has been absent for years and can alter weather patterns around the globe.

"Really everything hinges on El Nino, how it develops and how strong it will be," said Mike Palmerino, meteorologist for private forecaster DTN Meteorologix.

Climate scientists from NASA's Goddard Institute said on Monday that Earth may be close to the warmest it has been in the last million years, especially in the equatorial Pacific where El Ninos develop.

For the United States, a strong El Nino typically means warmer winters from the West Coast into the heartland, with cooler weather in the East. But there was little common ground among the five forecasters surveyed by Reuters.

Two said the Midwest, where consumers favor natural gas, would average warmer than normal, two said it would be colder than normal, and one said it would be moderate.

For the Northeast, home to 80 percent of U.S. heating oil demand, three forecasters called for a colder-than-normal winter, one said it would be warmer than normal, and one said it would be moderate.

The warmest forecast came from WSI Corp.

"We have recently seen a rather pronounced cooling of the northern Pacific Ocean that is typically incompatible with an emerging El Nino," said WSI forecaster Todd Crawford.

"Because of this, and based on our objective seasonal models, we now expect the first part of the heating season to be relatively warm in much of the southern and eastern U.S., and cool in the Northwest. This would be a relatively unusual result for an El Nino event, but we feel that the northern Pacific signal will exert more of an influence on U.S. weather patterns, at least through December."

The coldest outlook came from AccuWeather.

"The coming winter is shaping up to be quite different than last year's," AccuWeather said in a release last week. "The El Nino pattern that has noticeably impacted the 2006 hurricane season will lead to colder temperatures for the northeastern U.S. and Midwest, and a milder winter for the West Coast."

EarthSat was somewhere in the middle.

"If the El Nino stays weak, then the colder forecast would have better potential. If it strengthens, we'll go warmer," said EarthSat's Matt Rogers.

The National Weather Service said it expects colder than normal weather in the northern U.S, while DTN Meteorlogix said it would be generally mild in the Midcontinent and colder in the Northeast.

Brother, as we get closer and closer to the end times, it will only get harder and harder for meterologists and forecasters to be able to predict with certainty the weather and patterns they have learned to follow.

I guess we have to be prepared for whatever may come.

Meterologists, like most scientists, can only guess. There is no way to be certain sure of anything. When man thinks they have everything all figured out God comes along and shows them that they are not as wise as they think.

Amen.

This reminds me of a little boy on one of those TV shows the things kids say,

When asked what he wanted to be when he grew up a little boy responded, "A weatherman, cause they are allowed to lie." :D

 ;D ;D ;D ;D

The one thing I can say from Arizona, the leaves started turning color here in the last week of August.  I've never seen them turn that early.  Our normal turning of the leaves is mid to end of September.  Even on my apple trees, the leaves turned.  Another reason I burned this years apple crop, none of the apples were ripe, and were falling.  The other reason, y'all know already.

So I am looking for a colder, then normal winter.