The National Weather Service on Thursday predicted a warmer-than-normal winter for the northern and western three-quarters of the nation. The greatest chance for a warmer-than-normal winter is in Alaska, the Pacific Northwest, Montana, northern Wyoming and western North Dakota.
No place in the country is expected to be colder than normal, said Mike Halpert, deputy director of the government’s Climate Prediction Center.
The Southeast, Ohio Valley and mid-Atlantic can go any which way on temperature, Halpert said.
Overall the winter looks a lot like the last few, Halpert said.
“The country as a whole has been quite mild since 2014-2105,” Halpert said.
Winter weather expert Judah Cohen, of the private company Atmospheric and Environmental Research, uses different indicators to predict winter for the National Science Foundation. He also predicted a warm winter, based on weak snowfall in Siberia.
Hawaii, Montana, Michigan, parts of Idaho, Wisconsin, northern Illinois, Indiana and Ohio are forecast to be drier than normal, with the biggest likelihood in Hawaii, Montana and Michigan.
The weather service’s forecast doesn’t look at snow likelihood.
The El Nino hasn’t quite formed yet, but it’s almost warm enough.
Meteorologists predict there’s a 75 percent chance El Nino will be around this winter.
But it will be weak, not strong like the El Nino that helped lead to the record warm 2015-2016 winter, Halpert said.
“All things being equal, the slight kick we get out of the climate signal does tilt things toward the warm side,” Halpert said.
But it’s not enough to outweigh other factors if they push toward cold.
“Even on a warming planet,” he said, “it doesn’t mean winter goes away and it’s never cold again.”