Winter: Colder outlook
After chilly November, at least one service sees cold December, winter.
Despite a pleasant, mild spell that will continue through Thanksgiving and the day after, November evidently will break Philadelphia's run of above-normal months dating to January 2011.
With the month two-thirds gone, official temperatures at Philadelphia International Airprot are averaging about 4 degrees below normal.
The next few days will shave some of that departure, but the 10-day outlooks take on a decidedly blue shade starting Saturday.
So far the atmosphere has not been generous with clues about the impending winter, but the people at Commodity Weather Group, in Washington, believe they've seen enough to say rather emphatically that it won't be a rerun of the wimpy winter of 2011-12.
The CWG forecasters are going with a cold December for Philadelphia and much of the East, and a generally cold Dec. 1-Feb. 28 period, that's the meteorological winter.
They note that this fall has featured much more atmospheric blocking in the North Atlantic than was observed last year.
But the tropical Pacific remains a puzzle, and a wild card. The Climate Prediction Center has declared the death of the El Nino warming event, but the CWG folks aren't so sure about that.
In any event, we expect to see more winter outlooks pop up in the coming days, and we'll keep you apprised.