POLL: Is Winter Over For NE?

Several of the readers of our blogs have written us this week to inquire whether winter is over for the Northeast.

Certainly snow cover has shrunk from its normal breadth to hide in New England and northern Michigan.

Technically, of course, winter only started about three weeks ago. Snow lovers have been depressed by the recent warm spell which has lasted since the calendar claimed Winter had begun.

AccuWeather.com Professional's Joe Bastardi

is humbly admitting that the warmth has lasted much longer and is much stronger than he anticipated, but he says it's not over yet and he's sticking with his forecast, which has "2 below normal" covering most of the East Coast and 100-150% of normal snowfall for the Northeast -- see the detailed version on the Pro site for details. Remember last month was so bad, people thought he hadn't gone cold enough. :) Winters, of course, have large swings in most areas over the season, and Joe reminds us that no one was predicting an extreme winter sans swings this year. In fact it's important to remind people that at the beginning of this winter the "signals" that one looks at to predict the winter were mixed.

Unfortunately, they continue to be mixed. Take a look at the forecast for the Arctic Oscillation, for example. This is one indicator that Joe uses to predict conditions weeks in advance.

The red lines indicate different ensemble runs (see previous explanation) of the A.O. forecast. If the A.O. goes negative, the Northeast gets winter back.* Notice that, up until January 15th, they are all in agreement, but after that they start disagreeing wildly.

Now add to that the N.A.O., P.D.O., P.N.A.,* and several other indexes that can be used to predict winter, and you can see why we're not able to say for sure what's going to happen in two or three weeks. But for now, sorry snow lovers, it looks warm. The 15-day forecast for State College from AccuWeather.com (see below, screen shot from the Planner on our Premium and Pro sites) temperatures continuing to be above normal during the entire period.

*For a detailed explanation on what the abbreviations mean for U.S. weather, consult this USA Today page.