Winter forecasts for Philly suggest warmer temperatures and more dust on snow shovels

If the last three winters in the Philly region were to your liking — warmer than normal and light on the snow side — so should be the winter of 2024-25.

At least that’s the consensus among the major forecasting services that have issued their preseason outlooks, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which released its projection Thursday.

The government forecasters see the odds favoring above-normal warmth in the eastern third of the country, including Philadelphia, and the Southwest. The general warming trend was a factor in the outlook, they said, but by no means the only one.

While the forecasts didn’t include snow probabilities, the pattern is likely to be more favorable for cold rain than snow in Philly and across the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast, said Jon Gottschalck, the operational prediction branch chief at the Climate Prediction Center.

And winter may be kind to the Jersey beaches and others along the Atlantic Coast.

However, echoing comments by other forecasters, Gottschalck advised that conditions in the tropical Pacific, which are drivers of winter in the United States, are far more muddled than they have been the last few years.

Regarding the winter forecast overall, he said: “We have less confidence in the outcome.”

After a period of unusual warmth in a vast area of the tropical Pacific, the waters are cooling. A weak La Niña — in which sea-surface temperatures would remain about a degree below normal through the winter — is likely, the climate center says.

If that happens, upper-air patterns would favor storms passing north of the region, the climate center says.

That would argue against classic snow-producing and beach-eroding nor’easters, Gottschalck said at the Thursday briefing.

Paul Pastelok, the chief seasonal forecaster with AccuWeather Inc., which also is calling for above-normal temperatures for the winter in Philly and elsewhere, concurred.

“We’re not looking for nor’easters,” he said. He added that the winter also could produce what are known as “cutters,” storms that travel up the Ohio Valley, which would put the Philly region on the warm side of the storms’ circulation.

In its outlook, released this week, AccuWeather called for 15 to 20 inches of total snowfall, below the long-term average of about 23 inches.

WeatherBell Analytics, which serves energy and other business interests, is on board with above-normal temperatures. It did not make a specific snowfall forecast but said it expected that Philly would see fewer days than usual with accumulating snow. On average, Philadelphia has just over five days with an inch or more of snow.

A little bit, and a lot, and that might help explain why the climate center eschews snow-amount forecasts.

The weak-La Niña winter of 2022-23 produced all of 0.3 inches of snow for the entire season in Philly, tied for the second lowest on record, and was one of the warmest winters in the city’s history.

By contrast, 65.5 inches accumulated during the weak-La Niña winter of 1995-96. That was the season of Philly’s biggest snow in 140 years of record-keeping, 30.7 inches, which fell Jan. 7 to 8.

Forecasters assure that the meteorological winter will begin on Dec. 1, with the solstice to follow three weeks later.

If past winters in Philly are any indication, expect anything, even in a warming climate.