"Sept. 28 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Northeast may have the coldest winter in a decade because of a weak El Nino, a warming current in the Pacific Ocean, according to Matt Rogers, a forecaster at Commodity Weather Group.
"Weak El Ninos are notorious for cold and snowy weather on the Eastern seaboard," Rogers said in a Bloomberg Television interview from Washington. "About 70 percent to 75 percent of the time a weak El Nino will deliver the goods in terms of above-normal heating demand and cold weather. It's pretty good odds."
Warming in the Pacific often means fewer Atlantic hurricanes and higher temperatures in the U.S. Northeast during January, February and March, according to the National Weather Service. El Nino occurs every two to five years, on average, and lasts about 12 months, according to the service.
Hedge-fund managers and other large speculators increased their net-long positions, or bets prices will rise, in New York heating oil futures in the week ended Sep. 22, according to U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission data Sept. 25.
"It could be one of the coldest winters, or the coldest, winter of the decade," Rogers said.
U.S. inventories of distillate fuels, which include heating oil, are at their highest since January 1983, the U.S. Energy Department said Sept. 23. Stockpiles of 170.8 million barrels in the week ended Sept. 18 are 28 percent above the five-year average.
Heating oil for October delivery rose 1.38 cents, or 0.8
percent, to settle at $1.6909 a gallon on the New York
Mercantile Exchange."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OK, let's address the actual weather part of the story first. Yes, it's true that weak El Ninos have a tendency to bring the northern and eastern parts of the country cold and snowy weather (as opposed to stronger El Ninos which generally lead to warmer winter weather- think 1983-84). It's also not uncommon to have those conditions misforecast by the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center (the very cold winter of 2001 comes to mind for our area, when most expected a mild winter)... and the CPC is currently forecasting a better chance of warmer than average temperatures for the northern tier of the U.S.:
This isn't the first time this has happened recently. A couple of years ago, a forecaster at Accuweather announced that the Northeast U.S. was "overdue" to be hit by a major hurricane. There was no indication that it would actually happen, but you'd have thought that it was a sure thing based on the media attention that comment received. And, of course, Accuweather loved the publicity it got as a result.
Regardless of the story, it always ends up in the newspaper or on national TV as "forecasters say..." or "meteorologists say...", even if it's only one clown making the prediction. Then, people ask me about it constantly, or worse, blame me when it ends up being wrong.
I'll wait until another day to rant specifically about the whole local winter forecast scam, but I'll leave you with this idea to use when you watch stories about weather: the amount you should believe a forecast is inversely proportional to both the drama (how unusual the forecast is) and the distance (how far into the future the forecast is for). That even goes for my own forecasts!
Thoughts? Arguments? Feel free to post your own rant below, or e-mail me.
This ends today's rant; we now return you to your regularly scheduled Wednesday.
Leave a comment