Interesting Winter Analog & Joe Bastardi

NOTE: This IS NOT Joe Bastardi's winter forecast!

Joe Bastardi came to do our weekly forecast discussion today here at Penn State and he talked about analogs between hurricane seasons and proceeding winters. It was really interesting to hear a forecaster who does it the 'old school' way with analogs vs. some of the new model hugging forecasters. We had a 'bang for the buck' hurricane season and likes the idea of a 'front loaded winter.' I forget the exact analog years he's using. Anyway, he likes to use hurricane seasons as indicators because of the fact that they transport heat away from the equator and toward the poles. Thus, cold air likes to sink and 'fill the gap' left by the warmer air. Therefore, he thinks we will have a lot of cold and possibly snow at the beginning of the winter and wouldn't be surprised to see it break in February with very warm temps and maybe a little more cold in late March/April.

One of the professors that attended the discussion read an e-mail he had just received about major October snow in Pennsylvania and the corresponding winter snowfall. After much research, he concluded that there are 15 analog years where PA has seem accumulating snow fall (I forget how much exactly) and below normal temperatures. This year is one of those years again! In those 15 years, the AVERAGE snowfall in State College, PA was 65" (the average is ~40"). That's 15" above average! He also did some statistics tests to test accuracy of the analogs and they were extremely accurate. I think its a pretty strong correlation.

Come on snow!!