Will This Autumn's Baked Alaska Gives Us Vermonters A Frigid Winter?

Will a weird autumn Alaska heat wave give us Vermonters a frigid
winter? It's possible. This photo shows a frigid January day in 2015,
in St. Albans, Vermont, the last time a warm northeastern
Pacific Ocean influenced the weather, It was really cold here.. 

There are all sorts of predictions for what this winter will be like, ranging from warm and dry to frigid and snowy and everything in between.

It's always hard to forecast a winter. It's even tougher this year, with a weak El Nino possibly influencing things, and weather patterns in the Arctic still making up their minds

One intriguing clue to this winter is the return of "The Blob."  

No, it's not a horror movie. But for those who don't like frigid winters, it could be somewhat horrible.

Here's what I'm trying to explain: There's been a huge and persistent and warm ridge of high pressure over and near Alaska throughout this autumn. This has caused record warmth across that region. An autumn Baked Alaska.

Fairbanks, Alaska has yet to see so much as a flake of snow so far this year. That's by far a record for the latest first snow. Nome, Alaska should have had about 20 freezes so far this autumn. This year, they've had one. So far this month, Anchorage is running ten degrees warmer than normal.

This warm high pressure system has heated up the northeastern Pacific Ocean. This area of toasty water has come to be known as The Blob. As the Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang points out, this can really chill us in the eastern United States.

The Blob last made an appearance in the winters of 2013-14 and 2014-15. You remember the talk of "Polar Vortexes" those winters, and how cold it was over Vermont and the rest of the Northeast. The winter of 2015 was also when Boston had its epic snow siege. 

Those extreme winters were created in part by "The Blob."  The warm northeastern Pacific Ocean forced the jet stream over western North America northward. That caused a big dip in the jet stream downstream, over the eastern United States. That led to repeated Arctic outbreaks in the winters of 2014 and 2015.  It also led to the hottest year on record in the Pacific Northwest, under that warm ridge.

Snow siege in Boston, Massachusetts, 2015. Warm northeastern
Pacific Ocean water helped cause an intense winter in
the Northeast. Photo by Charles Krupa/AP

The Capital Weather Gang assures us The Blob might not hang on like it did in the winters of 2014 and 2015. In 2016, it looked like The Blob was reasserting itself, but it dissipated. This year, the huge warm high pressure ridge over Alaska is showing signs of breaking down.

If it does break down and stay broken down, that will open the door to big Pacific Ocean storms. The storms will mix up the water in The Blob zone, bringing cold water up from down below. The warm blob will disappear and no longer be a factor in our winter.

There's no way to tell for sure whether this will happen or not. It's just one piece of the puzzle for a complicated winter forecast.

For the next week here in Vermont, it will sure be wintry. Temperatures will stay 10 to 15 degrees below normal most days, and the threat of snow showers will be almost ever-present, especially in the high elevations.

Beyond that, who knows?