Winter Ready

No better time to make a winter prediction post then directly before the first snow event of the new season.  That's more then can be said for last year when no predictions were out ahead of the October snowstorm.  The advisories are starting to pop up for the small event tomorrow morning that will leave most places with a nice little coating to prepare people for the Christmas season.

Now to the predictions.  I'm going to keep it pretty simple this time and give totals from the media outlets and if more come in that  I find, I will post them to the side.  All are for Philadelphia.

CBS - (Kathy Orr):  Kathy is pegging February as the wintry month with cold temperatures and higher snowfall including two potential nor'easters.  CBS takes the over with 22-28 inches.

ABC - (Cecily Tynan):  Agreeing with many others on the factors Cecily focuses in on the coastal storm and also shots of cold air from Canada.  She goes above average because of this and lands at 24-32 inches.

FOX - (Scott Williams):  Scott is the new guy on the block stepping in for JB.  Maybe he knows something the rest don't as he has gone with the lowest overall totals at 18-24 inches.

NBC - (Hurricane Schwartz):  Glenn looks at the recent coastal storms in October and ones in recent years as well as the correlation with the snow cover in Siberia and Canada to suggest a snowy winter.  He goes the highest at 30-35 inches.

Philly Weather - (Blog):  This very well done site says what many should when saying that all the current factors make this winter a tough one to predict.  With that in mind and other small details they stay at average with a prediction of 20-25 inches.

Metro - (John Bolaris):  After being dismissed by Fox for some personal problems John Bolaris is back, kinda.  Bolaris has found a spot writing for the Metro and while normally I wouldn't dig too deep into daily publications Bolaris has a strong background in forecasting.  Bolaris stays modest though does think coastal storms could be a large factor as he goes with a total of 20-25 inches.

Lehigh Valley Weather - (Me):  I'm not predicting for Philadelphia so I'm not really in the running like the ones above.  However, based on the circumstances this winter could be a back and forth battle of times of warmer and cooler temperatures.  I am going to put more stock into coastal storms (something that will also be added to the side) and go with a general above average total of 37-45 inches for both Reading and Allentown.

OTHERS NOTES
For the past two seasons I have picked locations to follow to see how much snow they would end up receiving.  Both times the two locations received well below normal snowfalls for that season.  I will follow both locations this year again to see how well they do.  Those will be to the right.  However, I will need a third location to keep the annual event going.  This year we add Caribou, Maine to the list.  All three of these locations could conceivably go above 150 inches.  They will stay on the right side in order of annual average snowfall.

Something else added to the list once the first snowfall starts will be something for my own curiosity.  I often think that if it were not for coastal storms are winters could be pretty boring.  Really boring.  So let's see how much snow we get and average it out with the final total for the season that comes from non-coastal storms.  I'm going to go with somewhere around 85 - 90 percent of our snow is related to coastal storms.


One other small note.  This season I will focus on the area specifically around the Delaware Valley not including parts of Delaware or New Jersey.  Basically I am looking at the eight counties from Berks, Lehigh and Northampton on south to Philadelphia has the area to watch. 

UPDATE:

Since I started this the winter weather advisories have moved east and now include all eight counties I was just talking about except Philadelphia and Delaware.  I'd say a general two inch total across most of the area will be common.