Will 2015-2016 Be the Year Without a Winter?
UPDATE: El Nino wins! The snow over the weekend counted as only a "trace" at Penn State, so as of April 4th, 2016, State College has recorded the number one least snowy "water year" (where the calendar is measured from June-June) on record -- 121 years -- if we don't see anymore snow for the next two months, which is unlikely. For the winter season (Dec-Feb), we only saw 16.3" of snow, ranking us #105 out of 121.
UPDATE 12/15: The snowless winter continues in the Northeast. See my blog "New England's snowless on December 13." El Jesse (mentioned below) is in full-effect, setting a new record for State College, PA.
ORIGINAL BLOG 12/3: El Nino is on, and on strong. There is no lack of articles online about it, including this one from AccuWeather.com which compares this season to the 1972-73 Winter, which had record-low snowfall (pretty much, none) for most major East Coast cities.
Could we see a repeat of that this winter? Certainly the forecast for the next month or two looks very warm. Here's what the NWS has for December (this is what we call "the blowtorch" in meteorology.
What can we find out by looking at similar winters during history? Generally speaking, a strong El Nino reduces snowfall totals, especially in the east (graphs by Ralph Weathernut). The aforementioned 1972-73 was insane, with no snow in Philly.
Not so fast, says Capital Weather Gang, there are loopholes. I will admit that one good storm can spoil the party and we've seen incredible snow amounts with warm temperatures before.
However, I will also point out that, since I moved to State College, Pennsylvania, we've only had two snow seasons significantly above normal, 15 near or below normal. We've set a new 9-year moving average low since 1934, and our decadal average is now the lowest since the 1920s. Our problem seems to be El Jesse, not El Nino, though I will be curious to see if we beat our all-time low seasonal snowfall total of 16.5" this year (set in 1889-1890). Here's what other strong El Nino winters have brought for us:
This data is inconclusive; it's a small set and appears as much likely to be above as below normal here in Central Pennsylvania, but the magnitude of the swing is higher below than it is above. Many comments I'm seeing in Social Media are from people who wish we'd see snow, (this is called "wishcasting") and just can't accept that we're under the strongest El Nino in 50 years, maybe ever. If there's ever been a time to set (monthly) record highs and have a snowless winter, it's this one. The Euro (ECMWF) model is printing out temperatures 40 degrees above normal next week in northern New York state!
