Winter outlook 2018-2019: How’d we do?

Climate.gov ^ | March 28, 2019 | Tom Di Liberto

[daniel1212]

With the season having ended, it is time for my annual review (see previous reviews here and here) of how NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center’s Winter Outlook did....Starting off with temperature The Winter Outlook issued on November 15, 2018*, for December-February was one that tilted towards the warm side (1).

Reality… well—and this is for all those GenXers out there—reality bites. Instead of a warmer-than-average Northern Plains, Pacific Northwest and West Coast, temperatures were colder than average. And the southeastern United States, a place where the winter outlook saw an equal chance of all options, was the warmest compared to average.

Was the precipitation outlook any better?

It’d be hard to be worse, even when looking at a much more notoriously difficult thing to predict like precipitation (4). In the precipitation outlook, CPC forecasters concluded there was a tilt in the odds towards a wetter-than-average winter for the southern tier of the United States, stretching along the East Coast through New York. Meanwhile, they thought odds favored a drier-than-average winter across the Great Lakes.

In actuality, wetter-than-average conditions extended across a much larger portion of the country as wetness reigned (get it...? reigned sounds like “rained.” I’ll let myself out). In fact, the only broad area that observed below-average amounts of precipitation was over southern and western Texas into New Mexico, an area where the outlook tilted towards a wetter-than-average winter.

...

In February, the western half of the country was transported to the ice planet Hoth. A huge area across the Northern Plains stretching into the Pacific Northwest observed temperatures more than 11°F below average for the month. February 2019 became the second-coldest February since 1895 in Montana and North Dakota, the third-coldest in South Dakota, and the fifth-coldest in Washington.

[Paladin2]

~7400ft looking South from the old Moonlight/Madison “lodge”:

http://webcam06.bigskyresort.com/mjpg/video.mjpg

Pretty good coverage on the Headwaters...

[Robert DeLong]

When I was younger I would have loved it there. Now I hate cold weather. When it gets to 50 here I’m grumbling about the cold and wishing for warmer weather to return. When it gets colder than 50 I’m hibernating. 8>)

[Mom MD]

Coldest March on record in the Denver metro. April wasn’t much better...

[Paladin2]

Here’s the best that the, now lame, Google can come up with:

http://mashupsoup.com/gradient-is-the-elixir-of-youth/

I think it goes back to the 60’s, but the originator is now, sadly, lost.

[metmom]

Warmer than average for NY???????????

I find that hard to believe.

[daniel1212]

Force of habit, the GW one it seems. https://weather.com/safety/winter/news/2019-02-14-march-april-may-2019-temperature-outlook-the-weather-company