Tom's Winter Forecast 2024: Final Grade

 

Winter 2024, was one of the mildest winters on record, ranking second overall. You can read the full write-up on the season and February, here.

It was Halloween, when I issued my winter forecast, Winter Weather Puzzle: Unstacking the Season's Forecast. A strong El Niño cycle was likely to dominate our winter weather pattern, and it did.

The lack of cold came as no surprise, there were only 17 days below freezing. The biggest surprise of the winter was of those 17 days, five fell below zero, in January.

My forecast performed well, the fact snowfall came UNDER my predicted 35 inches, was already something I thought was more likely, than going over. Most of the 24.6 inches of snowfall came over the 10-day cold-snap in January.

The combination of a strong El Niño cycles with the warming climate, was the set-up for a near-record warm winter, and I would expect a similar result in the next strong El Niño cycle.

Sudden Shift: How Our Warming Climate Impacts You, goes Indepth on the how warmer winters comes with changes that we experience more, yeas round.

Overall I grade my forecast as a B+/ A-. The message was much above normal temperatures and below normal snowfall. The punch of cold in January came when we average our coldest weather of the year, it just didn’t last very long and is less likely to in the future.