If you’re a long time Atlantan, you may remember the winter of 1992-1993, especially the end of it. That was the year that the spring race at Atlanta Motor Speedway got snowed out on March 14th, as over a foot of snow blanketed the area in what some called the “Storm of the Century”.

If the Accuweather winter forecast is to be believed, we could see similar conditions this year. Overall, Accuweather is predicting warmer than normal conditions for much of the Plains states, but cooler than normal conditions for the Southeast, including Georgia. Less snow than normal is predicted from the Pacific Northwest through the Dakotas and Minnesota, and more snow than normal is predicted across a broad swath from southern Nevada, through Oklahoma, and then widening from north Georgia northeast through Connecticut. North Georgia could see as much as 150% of normal snow.

The Accuweather folks disagree with the National Weather Service winter forecast, which was updated on October 19th, and calls for warm temperatures across much of the country, and normal temperatures in the Southeast, and wetter than normal conditions from Southern California through Texas, and in Florida and southeast Georgia and South Carolina.

The main difference in determining the two forecasts lies in the ultimate effect of the El Nino period that we are now in. The NWS thinks that will be the major influence on this winter’s weather, while Accuweather believes that the El Nino will not be as strong as advertised, and looks to analogs of similar winters, including the late snowing winter of 1992-1993 as models for what is to come this season.

Posted on Friday, October 20th, 2006 at 6:54 pm
Categories: Winter 2006-07, Winter Forecasts.

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