AccuWeather's 2024-2025 winter forecast
Will it be a cold and snowy winter? Lincoln Riddle spoke with AccuWeather's long-range experts to find out.
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00:00Last winter was the warmest on record for the United States. While the upcoming winter is generally forecasted to be colder than the last, Accuweather's Paul Pastelok says overall, it will still be warmer than the historical average for many areas.
00:15I think it's still going to be mild. We're going to have some really good surges, especially the southern plains through the Ohio Valley, Tennessee Valley. We'll see those surges and it'll be noticeable throughout the season.
00:26A weak La Nina is forecasted for this winter. La Nina is a weather pattern caused by cooler than normal ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific. Typically, La Nina winters see a stronger and more frequent northern storm track set up across North America. But with La Nina forecasted to be weak, Pastelok says other variables could have a bigger impact in our weather this winter.
00:49In a normal La Nina, we look for a storm track to be dominant over the northwest western Canada. With a weaker La Nina, so much more can go wrong. I mean, there could be changes in the storm track during the course of the winter season, could dive farther south into California, and they can get hit, which we kind of do expect this year.
01:06Overall, snowfall is expected to be normal to below normal for many regions in the U.S. this year. Pastelok says there are three areas of the country that his team is watching that could see snowfall run above average.
01:19Some very heavy snow expected across the interior west, northwestern areas of the country, but I think you'll get some snowstorms too that put down the snow, Minneapolis, Duluth, maybe parts of the Dakotas as well, and then get their share in December and maybe into February for parts of the interior northeast.
01:38In the Midwest, mid-Atlantic, and northeast, many cities saw snowfall run well below normal last year, especially along the I-95 corridor. Pastelok says while snowfall is expected to once again be below normal in these areas, snowfall is forecasted to be closer to the historical average for the season.
01:58Reporting for AccuWeather, I'm Lincoln Riddle.