Winter: Warm thoughts
The government and a private service suggest a warm start to winter. Sound familiar?
Recalling how the consensus forecasts worked out last winter, we mention speculation about the coming winter with maximum feasible caveats.
To paraphrase the Ad Council's famous words, perhaps friends shouldn't let friends make seasonal forecasts.
That said, on the first full day of the astronomical autumn, we note that the most-recent Climate Prediction Center outlook sees the odds favoring warmer than normal temperatures for the November-January period.
WSI Corp., the Massachusetts-based company that forecasts for energy interests, is calling for a warmer-than-normal December. It hasn't yet issued a forecast publicly for the rest of the winter.
Commodity Weather Group, in the Washington area, is a dissenter, calling for below-normal winter temperatures here.
How did the early outlooks fare last year?
WSI called for a mild December around here followed by a mild January. CWG went with below normal temperatures for December, and above for January.
December in Philadelphia actually finished ever-so-slightly above normal for temperature, and January came in at 4.7 degrees below. And you might recall it was the second-snowiest winter on record.
As for the government, the climate center's Jon Gottschalck summed it up simply by saying, "We have a lot to learn."
Not to pick at this scar further, but that's probably what we're doing, the consensus outlooks for the winter of 2012-13 were snow-heavy. That was followed by one of Philadelphia more-snowless winters – a grand total of 8.3 inches.
As we've written, the atmosphere is what the scientists call a "nonlinear chaotic system" in which nothing happens in a vacuum.
That isn't stopping meteorologists from getting back on that bicycle.
As they well know, meteorology should never be confused with astronomy.