Winter 2009-2010.

By Mark Vogan
Produced: Tuesday, June 16, 2009

A weak to moderate El Nino will force global warming folks to shout, “warm, warm, warm,” but I am becoming increasingly concerned at what this upcoming winter may bring. Looking closely at what’s happening, the hurricane season, the winter season, and the overall bigger weather picture, and I believe the Northeast and even into the South may be in for a winter that will take their breath away.

Those shouting last December when it was 70-80 degrees across the Southeast about how winters aren’t the same and they’re warm and wimpy. Well, the increasing evidence ringing clear in the cooling SST’s deep in the heart of the tropical Atlantic may force the abandonment of that nice, warm high that keeps a corridor from New Orleans to Washington, D.C. sub-tropical feeling in mid-winter and shut many up who say, “the Earth is at tipping point, look at all the warm air around, look at the blooming trees along the Mall in Washington or in Central Park.” That growing blanket of hellish cold is growing by the year, and it’s knocking on the doors of those very places that plan to get the shorts out and light up the grill this December and January.

The corridor of cold shifts this winter to the East Coast, after three winters of little snow and mild temps as the El Nino will push the moderating high off the Atlantic Seaboard by a persistent trough, which may very well regularly rotate arctic air in to cause problems. I am becoming increasingly worried about a cool, wet summer in the populated Northeast from D.C. to Boston and the stage being set for the weak to possibly collapsing (by November) El Nino, which enhances the southern branch jet and has a notorious reputation of producing severe winters for this part of the country in particular. Enhance the southern jet, which sweeps across the South and up the East Coast, and pull a trough of arctic air in, and you have big cyclogenesis potential. Pull the storm north off the coast, and that trough drags frigid air straight off the Hudson Bay vortex and produces subzero air temps into the heavily populated, oil-fueled Northeast.

The potential for a severe winter, that this part of the country has not seen in 20 years, is highly possible when you consider the building cold caused by the past winters and a weak El Nino that has a bad habit of bringing a bad winter, even in warmer times. Northwestern Europe has the same type of potential as the Northeast. All you would need is to pull a few hurricanes up the East Coast, stripping away surface heat off the Eastern Seaboard, and those arctic highs may be less moderated by recent winters, where waters were warm enough to moderate arctic highs pulling down from Canada.

The only region of the country I see having a warmer-than-normal winter may be the West, where a ridge may persist as the trough drops into the East; however, this may be one of those seasons where the amount of cold availability may be such that it overwhelms the lower 48 from coast to coast.