The Weather Channel Releases 2014-15 Winter Forecast

The Weather Channel Releases 2014-15 Winter Forecast

The Weather Channel has issued its winter forecast for 2014-2015, and it looks a bit different from last winter.

Compared to 2013-14, which was , this winter the chill looks to be more focused on the East Coast and Gulf Coast, according to the winter forecast prepared by WSI, which along with The Weather Channel is part of The Weather Company.

The forecast, which looks ahead to temperatures from Dec. 1, 2014 through Feb. 28, 2015, is based on an analysis of several large-scale factors in the land-ocean-atmosphere system.

One factor is, as you might expect, the presence or absence of El Nino -- an area of warmer-than-average water in the eastern Pacific Ocean near the equator.

While El Nino has not developed yet, WSI forecasters expect a weak to moderate El Nino to emerge over the winter months and potentially persist into the spring.

The forecasters caution, however, that the resulting U.S. winter temperature pattern during an El Nino tends to hinge on what happens elsewhere in the atmosphere. One important question is how "blocky" the jet stream will be over North America. In other words, forecasters consider whether the jet stream will loop wildly north and south and tend to get stuck in patterns for long periods of time, or instead tend to blow from west to east and carry weather systems with their alternating warm and cold air masses quickly across the country.