A LONG RANGE OUTLOOK (WITH A GRAIN OF SALT)

Written by: Bob Metcalfe

Each month, the Climate Prediction Center (CPC), which is a division of the NOAA, issues a three month temperature outlook for North America. I will say that we do check it out from time to time, but as mentioned before, its just one of the many pieces to the puzzle.

To the left, you see the 3-month temperature outlook issued from December 18 that forecasts the percent chance that temperatures in an area will be above or below average from January to March 2009.

What we see here is that there is a stronger confidence (of greater than 40%) that most of Texas and the south central US will end up above average for this time period, as indicated by the deep orange color. The colors weaken as you head north and east, with our western New York area with a 33% chance that we end up above average over those 90 days. Also of note is that the Pacific northwest has a chance at ending up below average, while most of the southwest, Rockies and north central US stay about average.

This isn't to say that we can't have extreme periods of cold or warm, in fact we'll likely have both. This just means that over the 90 day stretch, warm could win out for us. We ended up warmer than average for the month of December (despite it being the snowiest December on record!)