[pct-l] Winter forecast for 2011-2012

[Scott Parks]

Quoting Dr. Jeff Masters, senior meteorologist at weatherunderground.com:

"I'm often asked by friends and neighbors what my forecast for the 
coming winter is, but I usually shrug and ask them to catch some woolley 
bear caterpillars for me so I can count their stripes and make a random 
forecast. Making an accurate winter forecast is very difficult, as there 
is too much that we don't know. I've learned to expect the unexpected 
and unprecedented from our weather over the past two years, so perhaps 
the most unexpected thing would be a very average winter for 
temperatures. The one portion of the winter forecast that does have a 
high probability of being correct, though, is the forecast of dry 
conditions over Texas and surrounding states. Extreme droughts tend to 
be self-reinforcing, by creating high pressure zones around them that 
tend to deflect rain-bearing low pressures systems. The unpredictable AO 
doesn't affect weather patterns that much over Texas, so we can expect 
that the fairly predictable drying La Niña influence will dominate 
Texas' weather this winter."

His latest post makes the annual attempt to paint a portrait of what 
this winter will look like.

-postholer
-- 
www.postholer.com