El Niño will define winter

Way out west, there’s an air mass controlled by the El Niño cycle that will play a part in this winter’s weather. The National Weather Service office in Duluth released its winter weather forecast this past week, and it leaned toward the warmer Pacific Ocean air currents bringing the region a winter with above-normal temperatures and below-normal snow amounts.

But beware, the El Niño effect is never quite predictable, said meteorologist Ketzel Levens on Oct. 19, and “we are still going to experience winter.”

No two El Niños are the same, the NWS reminded, saying “the last five El Niños were all very different.”

According to the NWS, there is a 42-percent chance that it will be a warmer winter and 33-percent chance that it will have precipitation in the normal range. The forecast is a long look, Levins said, so there could still be periods of extreme cold and snowstorms.

But don’t expect to see anything like the record-breaking snow that fell across the region last season. A year ago, it was predicted that snowfall would be above normal and temperatures a bit below normal. The winter was actually warmer than expected, right at the average, and, well, there was indeed all that snow.

“Snow storms will likely occur at times this winter,” the NWS report stated. “However, the frequency, number, and intensity of these events cannot be predicted on a seasonal timescale.”

The El Niño won’t be felt right away here. Its biggest impacts are January into March, Levins said. The El Ninño pattern follows three straight winters of the La Niña, something that hasn’t happened since the 1976-77 winter. During La Niña winters in the U.S., the southern states see warmer and drier conditions than usual and the northern states and Canada tend to be wetter and colder.

The pattern can bring higher precipitation, but with warm temperatures it often comes as rain.

Similarly strong El Niño patterns in the past have mostly produced above-normal temperatures. In winters beginning in the years 2015, 1997, 1991 and 1982, there was a temperature shift 4 to nearly 9 degrees above normal. The exception was the strong El Niño winter in 2009-10, when the average temperature was 1.2 degree below normal.

El Niño effects following a La Niña are all over the map, adding to the difficulty in pinning down a forecast this year.

That explains the big “disclaimer” from the weather service. “This data is not a forecast. Specific conditions from El Niño are not guaranteed, it simply tilts the odds.”

If you can’t beat the vagaries of winter, you could certainly join in the collection of data. The NWS wants to add to its Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow network, what it calls CoCoRaHS, a group of regular people out there measuring, mapping and reporting precipitation in the region. The network was vital last winter in collecting data on which areas in Carlton County were getting the most of the historic snowfall. Go to http://www.cocorahs.org to find out more about being a weather collector.