ASU Climatologist shares the winter season forecast

Winter is officially just around the corner and temperatures are starting to drop to their seasonal norms. But what can we expect for the next few months and will we experience an “El Nino,” a “La Nina,” or something in between? We asked ASU Climatologist Randy Cerveny.

“We’re going to have the storm come through but we don’t have the moisture being fed into it and it’s kind of like having a gun without bullets…we’re probably going to get some wind, we’re probably going to get some cooler temperatures over the next few days but unfortunately we just didn’t tap into that moisture that we needed to,” Cerveny said.

He continued that within the next few weeks we will have colder temperatures and not the heat that we’ve had the last few months, it will shift over to the midwest.

As far as precipitation, the moisture has reached more of the Oregon and California regions and Arizona is missing the moisture.

“We’re getting the storms now…but we’re just missing the moisture to make it really a good situation for Arizona,” Cerveny said.

He adds that for the winter season, there will be fewer storms and it’ll push temperatures above the winter normal with temperatures ranging from the ’70s and ’80s.

“This is what we call a classic ‘La Niña’ period of time. What we have is the digestion stream that pushes our storms, is now pushing those storms up into the northwest part of the country…and that unfortunately means that we don’t have them,”Cerveny said.