Posted on 05/03/2019 5:10:08 PM PDT by 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.
It has seemed to me that for a long time the NOAA Long-Lead Forecasts ("Experimental") almost always predict overall warmer than average temperatures for the U.S., as it does now:
- https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/long_range/two_class.php
There are many of these to choose from under the heading of "OFFICIAL Forecasts" here .
However, I never saw if and how these forecasts corresponded to reality, until I came across the Climate.gov blog which the article above is from. The author of which is to be commended for annually issuing a review of long-range meteorological Winter (Dec. thru Feb.) forecasts versus what was observed. One of the pages of which has a list of long-range predictions going back many years. And which confirms that for a long time (at least since the winter of 2006-2007) the NOAA almost always overall predicts warmer or much warmer than average, but which most often was not the reality.
Read as sets of 2 lines each, with the top row (under the date) being the forecast, which is followed by the observed reality: 
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And here is the image for Dec. 2016-Feb. 2017
Forecast and reality for Dec. 2017 thru Feb. 2018 is below:
Of course, living in Ne England means that weather is very hard to predict, but we welcome climate change when it means warmer weather versus cold. Yet thank God for the His grace of His reality in any weather or state.
Uh, NOT so much yet...
I think studded tires are legal in Mont. through May.
YMMV....
Actually, that's not climate, that's the seasonal forecast and they didn't even come close. weaterbell.com and Joe Bastardi did much better. He had the cold a little more east of where it was.
studded tires, that may not protrude more than one-sixteenth of an inch beyond the tire tread or that are clearly marked by the manufacturer on the sidewall “all season mud and snow”, upon a vehicle when required for safety because of snow, ice, or other conditions tending to cause a vehicle to skid.
mdt.mt.gov
Did the People in Los Angeles have to buy sweaters and rain gear ?
Don't leave home without them...
As provided in the first comment,
Meteorological winter (in the Northern Hemisphere) is the period from Dec. 1 through Feb. 29, whereas regular winter is the period from approximately Dec. 21 through March 21. - https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/weather/ct-wea-asktom-1123-20181122-story.html
Snow be winter....
As a petroleum geologist, if I had a track record like that I would be fired. Of course, their long range forecasts are all about an agenda.
The icebergs haven’t melted causing entire continents to flood so we did pretty good.
I remember being in Miami Beach when the temps went down into the 50's with wind, and seeing people with big puffy winter coast and gloves on the streets, whereas her you usually see people with just light clothing in the same weather.
Meanwhile, NASA Declares Carbon Dioxide Is Greening The Earth: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3746333/posts
AOC missed her calling. She’d make a great climatologist.
We ran out of places to put snow.
In the record month, there were 6-7 days where it got into the mid-40s, reducing the snow on the ground.
You're showing the highest elevations. The golf course is playable, no snow. 8>)
The Bae of the Ram8 lift is at but ~7,000 feet.
The Base of the Ram8 lift is at but ~7,000 feet.
Hardly the highest elevations...
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