# North Western PA Forcast



## kandklandscape0 (Sep 9, 2007)

Wintercast 2007 / 2008 
It's that time of year... time for us to give our predictions on the upcoming winter. Here's the script to go along with the video that will be posted soon:



There are two main keys to the 2007-2008 winter forecast and those keys lie thousands of miles away in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans with La Nina and the North Atlantic Oscillation.
A strong ridge of high pressure will be the dominant player in the central Atlantic Ocean and will likely force most of the coldest and stormiest weather to our North.

La Nina, or cooler than average sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, will have a major effect on the jet stream, the upper level steering currents over North America. This will keep the Northern Jet and the Southern Jet split through early January, keeping the bitter cold air bottled up in the Western part of the United States and Canada. The southern branch, which controls moisture, should stay near the gulf. We normally get our biggest snowstorms when these two phase, or combine.

This year, however, we will likely see less of this and more fast-moving shortwaves, or clipper systems, from our Northwest. These will be quick-movers and won't stick around long. One of the main concerns is the potential for ice and sleet with milder weather as the atmosphere tends to a more unstable thermal profile.

To sum it all up... November and December will likely be slightly cooler than average while January and February will likely be a little warmer than the norm. As far as snow is concerned, we'll have to wait until mid-January through early March for potentially heavy accumulations as nor'easters always bring the deepest snows to the Alleghenies... But with the setup this year, the formation of nor'easters may be few and far between.


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