Accuweather/ Bastardi Winter Forecast

Say Joe:
Bastardi predicts the current El Niño will fade over the winter and will probably not have as much of a role in the overall weather pattern as one would think during a typical El Niño year. In July, Joe was the first to talk about how the fading El Niño will play a role in the winter forecast. This fading El Niño pattern will lead to a stormier and colder winter in the southern and eastern United States. While the El Niño is fading this winter, other factors are pointing to a winter very similar to that of 2002-2003.
We regulars know Tony poo-poo's long range forecasts, but this one had me scrambling to look up 2002-2003 in the archives. We've been terrified all summer about what is to happen to us here in the PNW, what with the El Nino child in the oven. We are also hosting a Winter Olympics at an area with a very LOW base elevation. Looks pretty sketchy!
Tony has mentioned Mt Bachelor sometimes benefits from the more southerly El Nino-inspired storm tracks. We've had plenty of precip from this lastest Pacific lunker, but after two inches it turned to rain. This warmer pattern is what hurts us most here, as we always get snow early but it tends to get rained off during winters such as these. Still, we have the highest base of any of the meritime PNW ski areas so always seem to have a strong finish. That is exactly what occured during the winter of 2002-2003. Keeping our fingers crossed.

Here is the link to the maphttp://www.accuweather.com/news-weather-features.asp?#extremes

Hey Tony any word on what the 2002 - 2003 winter was like in Utah?

2002-2003 was bad year for Utah. Very slow start and driest January in 36 years. Hope it's not true.

Here it is straight from Joe:

http://www.accuweather.com/video-on-dem ... 20Forecast

And as for 2002-2003:

http://webpages.charter.net/tcrocker818/

gulp! :shock:

Less than a week ago ](*,) I posted the percent of normal snowfall in the 5 seasons with comparable El Nino strength as now in one of the eastern threads:


This demonstrates that mild El Ninos are not good snow predictors, with the possible exception of below average in the Pacific Northwest. I have mentioned before that the Whistler Alpine does not appear to be very sensitive to El Nino/La Nina. 2002-03 was well above average at Whistler and 2006-07 was huge. Those 2 years offset the stinker season of 2004-05. Utah was the other way around, low in 2002-03 and 2006-07 and one of its best ever in 2004-05. All 3 of these seasons had steady, similar mild El Nino readings to what we have now through most of the northern winter. So anyone here want to tell me that the El Ninos were the key weather drivers of all 3 of those seasons?

The negative El Nino impact is most evident in Washington State. Of those 5 seasons above, Bachelor had 2 average, 2 below average and the low one in 2004-05 like the rest of the region. The overall monthly correlations to MEI (El Nino index) in the Northern Rockies of both US and Canada are similar to those in the PNW. But looking at these 5 mild El Nino years, that effect appears to be more limited to the stronger El Nino seasons.

Schubwa presumably wants to refer to my more detailed season summaries:
http://bestsnow.net/summ03.htm
http://bestsnow.net/summ05.htm
http://bestsnow.net/summ07.htm

Yea, I still maintain these long term forecasts are next to worthless. They're pretty much a pure guess as to what could happen, but I'm sure they do drive people to their website and generate discussion on boards like these. Probably will help the sale of snow tires in the mid-Atlantic and Northeast too.