NOAA’s winter outlook is no snow lover’s dream for Lehigh Valley
If you’re as now-loving, winter sports enthusiast counting down the days to your first run on the ski slopes, look away from the latest National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration outlook.
For the second straight year, the Lehigh Valley and Mid-Atlantic region are likely to have a meager output from Mother Nature where snow is concerned. NOAA predicts milder-than-average conditions just about everywhere but the northwestern tier of the country.
Last year, the 5.3 inches of snow that fell at Lehigh Valley International Airport were the lowest seasonal total in recorded history for the area.
The snow-starved among us can blame La Nina for the mild winter outlook. The climate pattern is responsible for cooling water in the tropical Pacific Ocean, shaping weather patterns in the U.S. to bring cold and snow to the North and Northwest. The rest of us fall under a pattern where mild and dry conditions are favored.
“With La Nina well established and expected to persist through the upcoming 2020 winter season, we anticipate the typical, cooler, wetter North, and warmer, drier South, as the most likely outcome of winter weather that the U.S. will experience this year,” Mike Halpert, deputy director of NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, said in a news release Thursday.
Halpert noted during a call with reporters that La Nina typically cuts down the odds of big snowstorms on the East Coast, but nothing is definitive this far in advance. (El Nino, a climate pattern that causes ocean temperature variations that are opposite of La Nina, usually brings snowier-than-average winters to the region).
So is all hope lost for snow lovers of the Lehigh Valley? Definitely not.
NOAA’s outlook splits the country into three neat sections based on temperature and precipitation. It sees the southern tier — an area running from southern California to North Carolina — having a dry winter. Cool and wet conditions are favored in the northernmost states in a section that runs from Oregon and Washington to parts of the Ohio Valley. The rest of us will be close to normal, or have odds favoring neither wetter-than-normal or drier-than-normal conditions, NOAA said.
The keys to a good snowstorm involve not just precipitation, but the right temperatures. Halpert said he doesn’t expect blasts of Arctic air to be a big factor for the region this year, with the polar vortex more likely to affect the Northern Plain sand Great Lakes.
The Lehigh Valley area is favored to have at least a 50% chance of above-average temperatures this winter season.
The warning of NOAA’s outlook (or any long-range forecast) is that it’s examining higher or lower odds of what the winter should look like. What it’s not doing is spelling out any specific time frame or storm expectations.
“NOAA’s seasonal outlooks provide the likelihood that temperatures and total precipitation amounts will be above, near or below average, and how drought conditions are favored to change,” the release said. “The outlook does not project seasonal snowfall accumulations; snow forecasts are generally not predictable more than a week in advance.”