For every Wisconsinite who ventured outdoors last winter, who shoveled and shivered for months, there's slightly good news.
Forecasters are predicting the nastiness quotient to drop a notch this winter. The prediction calls for a colder and snowier winter than normal in Wisconsin — but not as cold and not as snowy as the winter of 2013-'14, when the phrase "polar vortex" suddenly became part of everyone's vocabulary.
"It will not be as bad as last winter, but last winter was very extreme," said Jack Boston, senior meteorologist for AccuWeather Global Weather Center.
El Niño is caused by prolonged warming in Pacific Ocean surface temperatures.
"Generally during a stronger El Niño we have a warmer winter, and with a weaker El Niño it gives us an equal chance for above or below average temperatures and precipitation," said Miller. "There's no strong signal telling us one thing or the other. It's a tough one to predict. I don't envy (the Climate Prediction Center) in that regard."
Milwaukee suffered through the 10th coldest winter on record, with an average temperature of 17.2 degrees, which was 7.7 degrees below average. And Milwaukee's snowfall of 54.8 inches between December and February was a whopping 19.7 inches above average, said Sarah Marquardt, a National Weather Service meteorologist based in Sullivan.
"Last winter we were dominated by pushes of colder air from Canada," said Marquardt, adding that polar vortex "is just a fancy name for this cold air that originated to our north. It was a cold air mass in Canada that dropped down over us, and the phrase took off."
Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel
