What kind of winter is it going to be for 2013 winter?

[Wilk INStheWEST]

If there is one thing that you can bank on is that the weather man has no idea what is going on, they are down to being accurate to maybe 6 hours at best . I have watched the weather forecast change numerous times throughout the day , and tomorrow's weather is completely different than hours before . That being said why would you believe anything they predict months in advance .

I would be more inclined to believe something that is predicted months in advance, than a day before. A high level prediction is really just looking at general trends, such as it's going to be a warmer than usual or drier than usual season. This type of thing is based off of a global scale, and those systems generally tend to behave as predicted. Similar to the economy, that it will generally tend to move in an upward or downward trend, but on a day to day basis can be rather erratic, as it is based on so many other factors. Same with day to day weather, much harder to predict. That storm they may have predicted yesterday could have swung south by 10 miles because 3 cows to the west farted at the same time.
That said, I'm hoping the Farmer's Almanac is off this year and we got a lot of fluffy white stuff, I have half the winter off and I plan on burning a lot of fuel.

 

[Skegmeister]

ENSO - El Nino Southern Oscillation is the meterological phenomenom that drives the weather patterns. I am a bit of a weather geek, so after reading, watching and listening to other weather geeks, El Nino is currently in neutral with indications of warming up to 0.5F over normal SST - Surface Sea Temps and will continue to have higgher than normal SST's climbing and holding until Feb.
This and a couple million other factors affecting weather mean nobody knows ch!t about what the winter will be like for snow until you unload your sled

 

[ryan#1]

Well I'm getting nervous. Was clearing some trail to my favorite riding area yesterday and it was 20+ in the sub alpine. Last year our snow pack was starting to build in the high alpine at this time and we had double or more precip in the summer and fall. 2 winters of getting hammered by la nina hope she comes back but at this point we have had a major shift in weather from 2011/2 compared to 2012. 2011 she rained ALL summer and fall and carried through all year to a near record snowpack...this year hot and sunny all summer and most of september and october definately a different weather pattern...hope it changes up ASAP.