We are anticipating a winter that is slightly below the 30-year normal and much colder than last year. With a weak to moderate El Niño expected, a minimum in solar activity, and a more significant potential for a Greenland block to occur, we used ten analog years from the past with similarities to create the forecast. Due to some of these expectations, risks in the colder direction outweigh those in the warmer one, predominantly since one of our top weighted year is the winter of 2009/2010. The verification for the December-February period of this analog is below.

Not atypical from a weak El Niño pattern, our forecast is backloaded with the core of the anomalous cold coming in February. In the month-by-month breakdown below, December is forecast as the warmest compared to normal while February is the coldest.