Another brutal winter? Watch the Pacific Ocean

This week’s shivery weather doesn't necessarily mean another brutal winter lies ahead.  To know that, you'll have to keep an eye on the Pacific Ocean thousands of miles away. That's where climatologists have been on the lookout for an El Nino weather formation – a swath of warm water temperaturers that can affect weather across the world. An El Nino usually means a milder winter in the Midwest, according to Jim Angel, the climatologist for the state of Illinois.

So far, El Nino has been getting off to a slow start, Angel said. But there’s still hope: The National Weather Service has predicted a 60 to 65 percent chance of an El Nino forming during the fall and winter.  Angel said he can’t yet predict whether we’ll see another polar vortex like the one that traumatized the city with single-digit highs in January and February. If he could, he'd make a fortune investing in road salt and natural gas.“I would be a millionaire,” Angel said.This week’s chilly weather is a Canadian import, piggybacking a storm that came from the north and drenched Chicago on Wednesday, according to Casey Sullivan, a meteorologist for the weather service. The summer-killing cold front brought a high temperature 20 degrees below normal on Thursday. The high, 56 degrees, was the lowest on Sept. 11 since record-keeping began in 1871. The previous record, 61 degrees, was set in 1940. “Usually we wouldn’t see cold air penetrate into the country this early in fall,” Sullivan said. Temperatures should inch back up to normal over the next week, with highs in the mid-60s on Monday, the high-60s on Tuesday and around 70 on Wednesday, Sullivan said.

It’s normal for storms to roll through Illinois in the fall and bring cold temperatures in their wake, Angel said. But they usually come in late September and October. We can expect similar storm patterns through the fall, he said, carrying temperatures that dip closer and closer to freezing.
“That’s the typical fall pattern," Angel said. "Each time, they drag a little colder air into our region."

 http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-another-brutal-winter-watch-the-pacific-ocean-20140912-story.html