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?

Winter Will Be Colder Than Last Year, But Other Than That, Who The Hell Knows?

I don't have any clue what the weather will be like
this winter in Vermont and neither does anybody else.
 

We're finally going to get some belated September cold fronts Sunday and next week here in Vermont, so the air will finally have an autummal feel to it, at least on some days next week.

Which means, of course winter is coming. You didn't think this ever lasting summer would actually last forever, did you?

The big pasttime this time of year is to predict what this winter will be like. Cold? snowy? All over the place?

The bitter truth is nobody has a clue as to what this winter will be like here in Vermont or anywhere else for that matter. As I've said before, long range forecasts are very iffy indeed.

I can pretty much guarantee this coming winter will be colder than last winter. That's because the winter of 2015-16 was easily the warmest on record in Vermont. It's hard to get warmer than that, what with temperatures last Christmas Eve around 70 degrees.

Other than that, who knows what's in store for winter in Vermont for 2016-17.

I'm going to shamelessly rip off Capital Weather Gang, which told us what could happen around Washington DC this winter, and I can extend that by offering a couple scenarios for the upcoming winter in Vermont.

Just understand this is NOT a forecast. Just speculation.

Last winter's warmth was influenced by El Nino, a periodic warming of the eastern Pacific Ocean waters that influences weather world wide.

The thought was there would be a La Nina in that region this winter, which is a periodic cooling of that water.

But now, the prospect of a La Nina has turned iffy at best. The guess is the water temperature in the eastern Pacific will be kind of close to normal. Which doesn't give us any clues whatsoever as to what the weather will be like this winter. Especially since it's still possible that La Nina will develop.

Even if we were sure La Nina would develop, it wouldn't tell us everything. Winters in Vermont sometimes tend to be colder when there's a La Nina, but that doesn't always happen. Again, it's a guessing game.

Another interesting thing is what might be the return of "the blob" in the northern Pacific Ocean.

The blob, famously, was, or perhaps is,  a patch of unusually warm water off the west coast of the Pacific Northwest and the west coast of Canada, and just south of Alaska.

That blob helped create a ridge of high pressure along the western side of North America in the winters of 2014 and 2015.  It deflected storms away from California, which worsened the drought there. It's still dry in California, so a return of the blob would be terrible news or the Golden State.

It's not great for us here in Vermont, either, if you don't like cold weather. That ridge of high pressure in the western United States has a corresponding dip in the jet stream over the Midwest and Northeast.

That would mean repeated shots of bitter Arctic air into New England. Not good for the fuel bill, eh?

The water in the northern Pacific Ocean is now abnormally warm, which hints at the blob's possible return, but it might not last. Who knows? And even if the blob forms, it's no guarantee we'll have a cold winter in New England. It would just increase the chances of it.

By the way, don't rely on the Old Farmer's Almanac to tell you what this winter 's going to be like. I'm not criticizing the Almanac, because it's a lot of fun. It's just that the forecasts they give are no better than rolling a dice to get a winter prediction. Don't take it as gospel, please.