The winter may get off to a chilly start and end wildly, but in the end it may end up becoming one of the warmest on record, according to Accu-Weather.
In updating his forecast today, the commercial company’s long-range forecaster, Joe Bastardi, said the growing La Nina event in the equatorial Pacific should drive the winter.
During La Nina, the Pacific waters become chilly, and that ends up deflecting the jet stream farther north. The jet stream is the upper-air boundary between warm and cold air, and when it is displaced northward, it tends to be mild around here.
Overall, he said, this will be an “energy friendly” winter, with the warmth concentrated in parts of the nation where the most people live.
He predicted that relative to normal, January will be the warmest month of the winter from the Ohio Valley to the Northeast.
In an interview, he also predicted that the drought in the Southeast would get worse. “We are in a time of climatic hardship in this country,” he said.
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