Winter is Coming

This week’s blog was written by Jocelyn G., a Drummers alumni. She writes about the ways that meteorologists are able to predict the weather.

Anyone else wondering what this winter is going to be like? Well, I am personally I would like to see a lot of snow days this year! So how can we tell what this winter is going to be like? Well if you are interested in knowing how scientists predict what our winter is going to be like I’m here to help explain.

There are many meteorologists out there studying what this winter will bring they all use a lot of different technologies and methods to make these predictions. Something that helps these scientists figure this out is the climate patterns. This is a very interesting thing to look at now because our climate is constantly changing due to global warming. El Nino affects the water temperature of the Pacific Ocean. So if there is El Nino the water and land will be warmer than usual, affecting the winter weather.

A picture from last winter on a snow day!

Another thing scientists will look at is the jet stream. The jet stream is the border between the warm air and the cold air. So if the jet stream is pushed farther south more cold air will cover the land and there will be less warm air. This is why when there is what they call “a dip in the jet stream” we experience colder temperatures.

So what are they saying about this winter? Well, you can’t be one hundred percent sure, in fact, there are many different predictions and some of them are way different than others. From what I have gathered, in general, it seems that in Pennsylvania this winter the coldest weather will come in January or February. With this, we will have average and above-average snowfall in these months. It seems that December will not bring much winter weather though.

The photo used in this blog belongs to the author.