StormTracking the winter of '09/'10

By Rick Mecklenburg (rick@wsbt.com)

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StormTracking the winter of '09/'10

(WSBT photo)

By Jason Overholt

Story Created: Oct 29, 2009 at 4:35 PM EST

Story Updated: Nov 9, 2009 at 12:30 PM EST

Rick Mecklenburg's official forecast for the winter of 2009-2010 is for 68" of snow, or about 8" below normal and 9" below what fell last winter.

This was a cool summer, and the fall hasn't been especially warm either. In fact, this month has already produced snow as well as temperatures well below normal. Is that a sign of a rough winter?

Winter is almost here, and just about everyone wants to know what to expect, especially after last winter. There's no question we had a "real" winter last year. The snowfall total was above normal for the first time in four years, and the low of 19 below was not only the coldest temperature in 15 years, but the fourth coldest temperature on record.

The winter snowfall total has been steadily increasing over the past few winters. In fact, just four years ago, there was 38 inches of snow. That was followed in 2006-07 by 64.5", and almost 76" in 2007-08. The upward trend continued last winter too, with a total of 77.2" in South Bend. Looking at this trend, you would think that we'll have even more snow this winter, but I don't believe that may be the case.

There are several reasons I believe we will have less snow this winter than last year. The first and most important is this is an El Nino year. El Nino is the warming of the water temperatures in the Pacific Ocean. This causes the weather patterns here and around the planet to be a lot different than what would normally occur. We can go back and examine other similar El Nino episodes in the past 25 years. These years were 2006-07, 2002-03, 1997-98, and 1986-87. As you can see, snowfall in every one of those winters was well below the normal snowfall of 76.5". The average over all four of those winters was just 58.1 inches.

Supporting this is the fact that temperatures have been well below average in October. In fact, we will likely end October with an average temperature of less than 50 degrees, and this will be among the cooler Octobers on record. A check of the records shows that in the past 25 years, there have been four similar Octobers: 2006, 2002, 1988, and 1987. Three of these were El Nino years similar to this, one and all of them had below normal snowfall during the winter. The average over the four years was also around 58".

A final reason I think that this winter will be a little milder revolves around Lake Michigan. We had a cool summer, with only four days with highs in the 90s. Because of this, the water temperature on Lake Michigan is about 8 degrees below where it normally would be this time of year. Since lake-effect snow is caused by the difference between the water temperature and the air temperature, a cooler lake generally means less lake effect snow.

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