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Winter 2012-2013 General Discussion


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You never fail to amuse, that's for sure. Seriously, though, I'm thinking if there is a candidate for back to back miserable winters, this would be it, considering a moderate Nino is likely.

I know a lot of the easteners are drooling at the thought of a mod nino but after what happened last winter, I would be very cautious about using enso for forecasting the winter.

My unscientific suspicion is that last winter was less of an anomaly than we want to believe, and more likely the beginning of a stretch of mild winters ahead, (whether it last 3 winters or 10). That being said, we still should be able to see some wild 'events' to keep things interesting.

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I know a lot of the easteners are drooling at the thought of a mod nino but after what happened last winter, I would be very cautious about using enso for forecasting the winter.

My unscientific suspicion is that last winter was less of an anomaly than we want to believe, and more likely the beginning of a stretch of mild winters ahead, (whether it last 3 winters or 10). That being said, we still should be able to see some wild 'events' to keep things interesting.

My general rule of thumb with nino for winters in SE MI:

weak el nino: cold and snowy

mod el nino: a complete tossup

strong el nino: mild, dry, below normal snow

Again though you can never forecast based on enso alone. 2009-10 ended up being a strong el nino, and I always thought of '82-83 or '97-98 when thinking strong el nino, but '09-10 wasnt nearly that bad. It was much colder and snowcovered than youd expect with a strong nino (though nino wasnt forecast to get as strong as it did). Some very snowy winters here ('77-78, 2002-03) were weak ninos.

A string of mild winters is entirely possible. Not only has it happened dozens of times since records began, one might say we are due after such a snowy spell pre-2012. But theres no doubt that 2011-12 was an anomaly for its widespread extent and extremes. DTW getting 26" was one of the "lucky" ones. ORD ended up at 19.8" (first sub-20" winter in over 60 years), MSP had 22", NYC/BOS had single-digit inches, and on and on.

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Last year's long range forecasts cost alot of money for alot of firms, I know for sure about 95% of most outlets got it wrong.. It was the worst Long Range since 2001-2002...

If the long term blocking would have broken down properly, some of those forecasts may have actually turned out correct. The rediculously persistent EPO/GOA/Alaskan Low had it's claws in, something we haven't seen in modern times (Last 100 years)...

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It's going to be fun to see the winter forecasts if it looks like neutral conditions.

After many of last winter's predictions ended up being so horrible it's extremely hard to take any seasonal forecast seriously IMO. It's fun to speculate but IMO it's not much better than looking at a farmers almanac.

Bingo. I'm not even going to waste my time reading winter predictions. (Says the man who occasionally peeks at the 384 hr GFS in the winter).

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Bingo. I'm not even going to waste my time reading winter predictions. (Says the man who occasionally peeks at the 384 hr GFS in the winter).

If we have neutral conditions I'd guess that there won't be nearly the consensus that there was last winter (which didn't turn out very well). Probably see widely varying outlooks but maybe with a bias toward warm since that is the regime we have been in.

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I heard somewhere that the only forecaster to correctly predict our mild winter last year was Japan's weather office. Remember many of ours said we were going to have a cold and snowy winter last year. Well, I also heard that Japan called for us in the midwest anyway for a cold and snowy 2012-13. We'll see.

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If i was a betting man. Im going with a repeat of last winter. I have zero confidence in a cold and snowy winter

Ill go with something more severe than 2011-12 but less severe than 2010-11. Thats obviously going from one end of the spectrum to the other, so you can just call me the CFS :lol:. Seriously though, if I was a betting man, Id say no way do we repeat last winter. Even if its a crappy winter (think back to the mid-late 1990s) it will be better than 2011-12. Im talking more in terms of what I want to get out of winter, not total inches of snowfall. For instance, 2010-11 was better even than the 69 inches of snow would show because of the persistence of cold/snowcover, and 2011-12 was worse than the 26 inches of snow would show because of the lack of cold/snowcover. For example we could end up with 24 inches of snow, but if theres some sustained cold/snowcover, it will most definitely be better than 2011-12 in my book, despite coming up 2 inches short of 2011-12. Of course I shall bite my tongue for even suggesting a sub-30" winter.

First guess, July 19, 2012...for the 2012-13 winter DTW will see a total of 44.8 inches of snow.

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