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Stormy week; snowy winter?

The nasty wet, windy and raw weather expected to arrive tomorrow may be an hors d'oeuvre for the coming winter.

Alex Grizzo made a snow angel after a tumble on the sledding hill in Laurel Acres Park in Mount Laurel, N.J., in March. (TOM GRALISH / Staff Photographer)
Alex Grizzo made a snow angel after a tumble on the sledding hill in Laurel Acres Park in Mount Laurel, N.J., in March. (TOM GRALISH / Staff Photographer)Read more

The nasty wet, windy and raw weather expected to arrive tomorrow may be an hors d'oeuvre for the coming winter.

That's the view of Accu-Weather Inc., where Joe Bastardi, the company's long-range forecaster, is calling for the coldest and snowiest winter around here since 2002-2003.

Bastardi said that overall he expects winter temperatures to be about 2 degrees below average in Philadelphia, with perhaps 30 inches of snow. Typically, Philadelphia gets about 20 inches.

"I do think there are going to be a couple of big-ticket storms," said Bastardi, who released his forecast this morning.

This is no cause for panic, however. Keep in mind that the atmosphere is a chaotic system and that seasonal forecasters still are gazing into one of nature's most-opaque crystal balls.

The government's Climate Prediction Center will issue its winter outlook tomorrow, and it probably will be far more circumspect and less specific than the Accu-Weather one.

Bastardi predicted that the worst of the winter weather will be focused on the East Coast from North Carolina to New England. That would be a switch from last year, when the Midwest got hammered.

By contrast, the Pacific Northwest may be in the banana belt. Bastardi said it's possible that Vancouver, British Columbia, may find itself wanting for snow and cold during the Olympics in February.

Bastardi opined that the El Nino, the unusual warming of surface waters over thousands of miles of the tropical Pacific, will have some influence on the atmosphere over North America but that it should fade during the winter.

In the meantime, the short-term forecast has a decidedly wintry look. It calls for a major coastal storm to affect the entire region tomorrow into Friday, with perhaps another one on the weekend.

Heavy, cold rains and strong winds are possible, and the National Weather Service has issued a high-wind watch for the Shore.

"Even though winter is still a few months away," the weather service said, "this pattern is definitely winter-like."