Weather
By Dan Skeldon
You may have heard it’s going to be an easy winter. Don’t buy it. However, don’t rush to dig out your snow shovel yet either! My advice is the same for those who may have heard rumors of a long, hard winter with blizzards-a-brewing, and those who expect an average one: don’t believe everything you hear.
While winter forecasting has gained popularity over the last few decades, my skeptical opinion has never wavered on its accuracy or usefulness. Now it’s true that I dabbled in formulating a December through March forecast in the past, to varying degrees of success depending on the year. While the snow-lover and the meteorologist in me want to have the ability to correctly forecast the amount of snow and cold we’ll see any upcoming winter, the reality is the science is not there, at least not yet, to make that a real possibility.
Yet that doesn’t stop “how much snow this year?” or “how bad of a winter are we in for?” from being the most popular questions I, or any meteorologist, will hear this time of year. Right after the candy collecting concludes at Halloween, thoughts usually shift to the holidays, the chance for a white Christmas, and when will our first snow fall. While I admire the meteorologists who put many hours of sweat and toil into trying to answer these questions, I don’t put much stock in any forecast for an entire winter. Let’s say I tell you we’ll only have 6 inches of snow this winter. That prediction doesn’t keep snowbirds from going to Florida. Just like a forecast for 36 inches of snow this winter doesn’t lead to a rush on snow blowers or rock salt. However, let’s say that lightning strikes, and we get that 36 inches. Does it come in one fell swoop and the rest of the winter is warm and dry, or do we get 9 snowfalls of 4 inches each through a cold winter where there was always snow on the ground? How is that initial winter forecast perceived compared to what actually happens?
When it comes down to it, meteorologists still have plenty of challenges in the 7-day forecast. Heck, even tomorrow’s forecast can sometimes offer unexpected surprises. So yes, color me skeptical regarding anyone who around Halloween predicts how much snow we’ll see from Thanksgiving to St. Patrick’s Day. It’s not my lack of faith in my personal forecasting ability or meteorology overall. Science has made so many remarkable advancements of late, even in long-range forecasts. The hurricane forecast each summer and fall is positive proof of that success. However, the complexity of how a winter weather pattern evolves is still beyond the grasp of even the best computer models and best meteorologists out there.
However, that doesn’t mean we can’t ascertain some sense of the weather picture that will develop this winter. While a forecast for the entire three-month winter season is still a mystery, I attest that there is some skill going month-to-month when tackling a winter outlook. For instance, around Halloween, we can look ahead to November and early December. Come Thanksgiving, the pattern through Christmas can often be read. Then after Santa swoops in, meteorologists tackle the first month of the new year. Then when football fans are hoping to watch the Eagles in the playoffs, we can try to read the weather through the Super Bowl into Presidents’ Day. So instead of one likely inaccurate prediction for the entire winter right now, you will instead get three or four monthly outlooks from me through March. Yes, that could mean four wrong monthly forecasts instead of one busted forecast for the winter as a whole. However, the Atlantic City in me tells me to play the odds. Besides, sometimes in forecasting, like in life, baby steps are the best way to go.
With all that aside, snow lovers do indeed have a reason to get their hopes up for some early season snow this year, let’s say between Thanksgiving and Christmas. After one of the warmest Octobers on record, November will have its shots of unseasonably cold weather. That looks to continue into the first half of December, with the cold shots becoming progressively colder. An active storm track may also try to fire up during this stretch, and if some action along that storm track happens to coincide with one of those cold shots, some early season snow will result. It still involves a “threading of the needle” of sorts for everything to line up just right for early snow in South Jersey. However, we’ve had a snowy Thanksgiving in the past (1989 comes to mind). Historical chances also go up more into December, although are admittedly still low on Christmas Day itself. Right now, I think around or just after Thanksgiving an East Coast storm could hit.
However, as always, time will tell.
Meteorologist Dan Skeldon has a degree in meteorology from Cornell University. He has forecasted the weather in South Jersey for the last 18 years, first on the former television station NBC40 and then on Longport Media radio. Dan has earned the American Meteorological Society Seal of Approval for Broadcast Meteorologists, and now does television broadcasts on WFMZ-TV in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley.
