See the latest forecast for Monday, August 19 in the player above.
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- Summer winding down in central Ohio has some looking ahead to winter.
One of the bigger drivers of seasonal outlooks is the forecast for El Niño, La Niña or neutral patterns. No matter the seasonal outlook for our upcoming winter, we can count on warm days, cool days, wet days, dry days and even some snowy days. These occur every winter.
As of mid-August, we are coming out of a strong El Niño pattern and are shifting toward a neutral pattern heading into the start of autumn. However, the forecast heading into the winter months of December, January and February is for us to continue to transition into a La Niña pattern.
Generally speaking, a La Niña pattern for the winter will set up in our part of the country with near normal temps and wetter than normal conditions for the winter. But this pattern can be highly dependent on where the Polar Jet Stream sets up for the winter. In addition, if fall temps tend to stay warmer later into the season, we could have more wide open Great Lakes, too.
When clipper systems come out of Canada in the winter with wide open (non-iced over) lakes, this can lead to heavier than normal snowfalls in the lake effect snow zone. On top of that, jetstream locations do not stay in one place no matter the time or the season for that long and will shift, dip, rise, and sometimes flatten out. This leads to my early point that we will still experience the same crazy weather that we do EVERY SINGLE WINTER. We live in a fun part of the country where a small shift in the weather pattern does and will mean a big shift in weather.
To this point, think about how many winter weather events you have lived through in central Ohio where you felt like you lived on the wrong side of Interstate 70 because you either didn't get the snow you wanted or you got more snow than you hoped for.
According to the Climate Prediction Center at NOAA, we have a 74% chance of a La Niña pattern during the December-February period, yet it does not mean we are for sure going to only get one type of weather all winter.
Here's a look at data since 2010 for the winter periods, defined at Dec 1-Feb 28/29.
| Weak La Niña | |||
| Temp Diff | Precip. Diff | Snow Diff | |
| 2022-2023 | +5.40° | -0.74" | -11" |
| 2017-2018 | +0.03° | +0.86" | +2.4" |
| 2016-17 | +4.77° | +0.01" | -14.6" |
| Moderate La Niña | |||
| 2021-2022 | +1.03° | +4.70" | -10.6" |
| 2020-2021 | -0.75° | -1.82" | +2.5" |
| 2011-2012 | +4.30° | +2.61" | -10.3" |
| Strong La Niña | |||
| 2010-2011 | -6.32° | -1.56" | +3.2" |
| Average | +1.21° | +0.58" | -5.49" |
Looking at this data over the seven winters where either a weak, moderate or strong La Niña occurred, on average we have warmer, slightly wetter and much less snowy winters. During those seven winters, we had almost 25% less than normal snowfall, even though precipitation was slightly above normal. And the temps were more than a degree above normal, and if you take out the very strong La Niña winter of 2010-11, you would be nearly 2.5° above normal for the six moderate to weak La Niña winters since 2010.
This goes back to the above graphic showing the forecast for near normal/slightly warmer than normal temps, in general, for a La Niña winter. And with precipitation numbers about 3-5 inches above normal, even though snowfall is roughly 5.5" below normal each season, this points to the wetter portion of the graphic as well.
Now that I have explained the data to back it up locally, here are the outlooks from the Climate Prediction Center at NOAA for this upcoming December-February.
These temperature and precipitation forecasts are in line from what we would tend to see during a typical La Niña winter.
