December Forecast - Gloves Off - And January

UPDATE:Thanks everyone for your Comments! Those who followed the rules have been posted below.

UPDATE: This update was issued Saturday 1/3/09 by AccuWeather.com Professional's Joe Bastardi [BIO] (PRO USERS READ NOW | 30-DAY FREE TRIAL)

ORIGINAL POST BY ME, 1/2/09:

OK folks, the gloves are off for two reasons. One, I'm ready to defend our December Forecast. Two, it was darn cold in December but we're going to have a warm spell in January, according to our latest forecast. Here's how this is going to work. I'm going to present quotes from our original forecast made back in October then I'm going to present the data for December. I'll state my opinion on how I think we did, and you can chime in with Comments below, with certain rules applied (see bottom).

This is all done with the disclaimer that the official NCDC report on December will not be out until mid-month and it is there that we will see how it stacked up historically.

DECEMBER ONLY: What I will not do here is review our Winter Forecast because we are only 1/3 of the way through the forecast period (Dec. 1 - Mar. 1) so far.

Our winter forecast was issued twice, with AccuWeather.com Professional's Joe Bastardi [BIO] (PRO USERS READ NOW driving it. It was issued once as a news story on AccuWeather.com on October 9th (labeled "FREE" below), then again as a more detailed summary on Joe Bastardi's blog on our Pro site on November 26th (labeled "PRO" below). I'll exerpt here from both:

I think there should be no doubt based on what we saw on TV during the Holidays, in regards to travel problems and collapsed roofs out West, that December qualfied as "a rough month for much of the nation." Whether it was the roughest, we won't know until March 1st. But saying "rough" or "nasty" is a bit of a cop-out. Let's look at some numbers.

First, the December temperature departures from normal:

Now, we had some warm weather mid-month which evened things out (note that our forecast did NOT exclude warm days), and for most of the populated Northeast, temperatures ended up near normal - plus or minus one degree. However, the important thing to point out, however, is that even "near normal" was "nastier" than the last several years.

Here's the other thing to consider. Why look at December - the cold started before our Winter forecast was valid - in mid-November, and if you take that 3-week cold period between November 16 and Dec. 8, you get these numbers:

Now that's impressive! Clearly below normal over the entire area, with parts of the Appalachians in double-digit departures from normal! My feeling is that the "cold December" we predicted was off by 2 weeks, and considering we made the forecast two months out, I don't think that's anything to be embarassed about. Did it reach the worst-case scenario of the coldest in 50 years? Probably not in most locations; I have no way to verify that.

And next, the snowfall map. There are a lot of zeroes on that graphic, in places that simply don't report snowfall, so the graphic is probably not a good thing to look at. Instead, let's check out major cities snowfall versus their normals (here I'm going to add November and December based on the note above that the cold outbreak started before Dec. 1st):

Boston: 25.3" (NORMAL 8.9")Philadelphia: 1.3" (NORMAL: 4.0")New York City (Central Park): 6.0" (NORMAL 6.4")Pittsburgh: 10.9" (NORMAL 11.6")Baltimore: 0.6" (NORMAL 4.1")

So, we have mixed results. Clearly Boston was the winner, but both New York City and Pittsburgh were near normal. Philadelphia and Baltimore were below normal. Given the text of our forecast above, I could see how those people would be disappointed, even though we didn't make any specific predictions of snowfall.

What did we forecast beyond December? Read the links above about the "January Thaw." The latest update from Joe Bastardi (from Monday 12/29) is shown below:

If you'd like to chime in then feel free but I WILL NOT ACCEPT COMMENTS HERE WHICH...

- Don't contain weather data (no "it felt warm here so you're wrong" comments). The data for December is free on AccuWeather.com, just put in your zipcode. Premium & Pro have 15 years of it.

- Personally attack any AccuWeather staff or the organization in general, cursing, etc.

- Talk about the non-December portions of the Winter Forecast (as noted above)

- Talk about previous seasonal forecasts

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