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Bad news for Winter Weather

post #1 of 16
9/18/02 at 7:10pm
Thread Starter 
Just in from NOAA - their Fall and Winter Weather Predictions.

Some quotes:
<blockquote>
Below-normal precipitation is expected in the Northwest including Washington, northeast Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, western parts of North Dakota, and northwest South Dakota.
</blockquote> and <blockquote>
Temperatures are expected to be above normal across the northwestern, mid-western and northeastern states of the continental United States.
</blockquote>
Finally this gem of precision:
<blockquote>
Over the rest of the continental United States, there are equal chances for precipitation and temperatures to be above normal, normal, or below normal.
</blockquote>
Nothing like taking a stand!
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post #2 of 16
9/18/02 at 7:38pm
whatever!!!!

Last year they were calling for another epic winter in the Northeast with cold temps being the norm. And it turned out to be either the warmest or 3rd warmest winter EVER! Someone in vegas should put together a line with odds on what the weather will do in the winter, we could bet on it all summer long to attempt to stay sane!
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post #3 of 16
9/18/02 at 8:15pm
Agreed, whatever. What a terrific career, being a meteorologist; getting paid big bucks to say "it might rain".
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post #4 of 16
9/19/02 at 2:10am
Weather predicting is getting better each year as another years worth of data is put into the computer modeling systems. Not perfect, never will be, but better.

This is the year for another el Nino'. a milder version, so weather patterns may actually imporve over late last year up through this summer. We are have been having very dry and warm conditions of late across most of the country.

In the midwst last winter, Dec '01, very wintery with high amounts of snow and very cold temps that you don't usually get until last week of Jan or first week of Feb. Jan-Mar'02 rather tame and mild ending with an early spring,with normal precip., and colder than normal temps right through mid May. In fact May seemed a lot like November. Normal May temps returned on the Tuesday before Memorial Day weekend. There was an early and brief warmup in mid March for a couple of days, and then it cooled down to a few nights of below freezing tempratures. This very early warm up ended spring skiing, but caused fruit trees to prematurely bloom.

The follwing eight weeks of abnormal cold and wet weather, destroyed 85-90% of Michigan's Cherry Crop, reduced production of peaches, and because of the late start of warm weather, corn, hay, and other crops delayed as much as three weeks, because it was to wet and cold to begin planting.

So bring on El Nino' can't be any worse than this past winter/spring!
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post #5 of 16
9/19/02 at 3:18am
Quote:
Originally posted by laseranimal:
Someone in vegas should put together a line with odds on what the weather will do in the winter, we could bet on it all summer long to attempt to stay sane!
On our Oz ski site we have a forecasting comp - each person calls predictions at their favourite ski resort & that is compared to actual - I think predictions have to be in about 1 week before hand
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post #6 of 16
9/19/02 at 6:32am
People keep trying to sell me weather derivatives (in my work capacity). Have ski resorts thought about hedging themselves by 'buying' a warm/snow-free winter?
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post #7 of 16
9/19/02 at 7:08am
The news is not all bad. El Nino brings copious amounts of wet weather to the Southwest USA. Expect the following places to benefit:

Southern Sierra (Mammoth)
Central Sierra (Tahoe area, probably)
New Mexico (Taos)
Southern Colorado (Telluride)

Big storms tend to come later in the season during El Nino. I remember skiing in waist deep powder at Heavenly, over a deep base, in March, 1998.

Utah and Northern Colorado ought to have average seasons, while anything north of that will be dryer than normal. This is not the year to book a week at Whistler.

The season after El Nino is almost always La Nina, when the skies open up over the Pacific Northwest. The last La Nina was in 1999, when Whistler had epic amounts of snow.
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post #8 of 16
9/19/02 at 7:09am
As a former meteorologist let me add a few words.

Forecasting for the upcoming winter is not really meteorololgy, it is more climatology and highly error prone. Short term forecasting, i.e. for the next few hours or even a day are quite accurate nowadays. Of course your description of accurate may vary. If they say it'll snow in the afternoon and it doesn't start until night, do you count it wrong or not?

Quote:
Finally this gem of precision:

Over the rest of the continental United States, there are equal chances for precipitation and temperatures to be above normal, normal, or below normal.

Nothing like taking a stand!
What this really means is that they think it'll be a normal winter. That means about 450 inches at Alta, 360 at Vail. Not a bad winter at all.

And lastly, yes, ski resorts buy snow insurance routinely. It's a good bet for them.

Bob
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post #9 of 16
9/19/02 at 10:06am
Another thing to consider is that those "above normal" temperatures are predicted to be 1-2 degrees above normal. Guess those beautiful 31 degree powder days will be rainy now.

Bad luck to post bad snow predictions. Shouldn't do it. Shouldn't say it'll be good either. Also bad luck. Bottle it up, we're all thinking the same thing.
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post #10 of 16
9/20/02 at 11:31am
I think any improvement over last year will be well accepted. It's true the Southwest does tend to benifit from El Nino better than other parts of the continent..
But really weather predictions don't seem to be real accurate months in advance, days maybe, but months?
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post #11 of 16
9/20/02 at 12:13pm
Quote:
Originally posted by terry morse:
The season after El Nino is almost always La Nina, when the skies open up over the Pacific Northwest. The last La Nina was in 1999, when Whistler had epic amounts of snow.
644" for 98/99 at Whistler. 100"+ each month from December to January. Not bad, not bad at all!

Of course, that's the year Mt. Baker got 1140" and set a new record for most snow ever recorded. They only got around 800" last year
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post #12 of 16
9/21/02 at 3:02pm
Keep this in mind-little boys who told lies grew up to be weathermen.
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post #13 of 16
9/21/02 at 5:11pm
The only thing more difficult then predicting the weather is trying to make the picks in my office pool this year. The weather guys can't accurately forecast the weather a day in advance, never mind a season in advance.
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post #14 of 16
9/22/02 at 6:13am
While we are on the topic of weather forcasting, has anyone noticed in the ten day forcast, by the tenth day the weather has migrated to the average for the time of year, regardless of what the weather was the first day of the forcast?
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post #15 of 16
9/22/02 at 12:26pm
Quote:
Originally posted by CAPBOY:
The only thing more difficult then predicting the weather is trying to make the picks in my office pool this year. The weather guys can't accurately forecast the weather a day in advance, never mind a season in advance.
They are getting better. It's harder to say when to take that SLC vacation (you know there's a lot of powder, just exactly when is the dump?). As was mentioned above, the weaker El Nino will hopefully include more resorts this year. Some places are in between, and are not mentioned. Some of those are where you are planning your vacation. As I posted before, both SLC and Tahoe did well last year. These are probably good bets, but again, as was mentioned, a weaker El Nino will hopefully be kinder to other areas as well.
Despite your politics, the global warming trend is real, at least since the end of the 20th C.
You can hope that the particulate matter from all the forest fires will give us colder weather, as did Mt. St. Helens in '83 and Pinatubo in '93 '94, magificent winters, but this effect does not last long (yes it's sick, but skiers are sick . One not very credited theory is that there was the time when the Earth was totally blanketed with snow (so where do you want to ski today? . God. Think of the possibilities
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post #16 of 16
9/23/02 at 1:46pm
Quote:
Originally posted by WVSkier:
What this really means is that they think it'll be a normal winter. That means about 450 inches at Alta, 360 at Vail. Not a bad winter at all.
Thats 105" less than last season, this is not a good winter.

Common "The Nino!"
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