Winter Weather Forecast 2023-2024
El Niño makes it 44% likely to be drier and 41% likely to be warmer, leaving an approximately 60% it will be normal or colder and wetter
Joe Lester from NWS Billings presented the National Weather Service’s winter weather prediction update on October 20. He provided documentation that El Niño conditions are in effect and how that may impact our winter. In a typical El Niño, the Pacific jet stream is stronger making the storm track more active across the south; meanwhile the polar jet stream is a little bit weaker. That generally provides for a warmer and drier average winter for southcentral Montana.
Lester reiterated that while scientists have a fairly good understanding of how and why El Niño winters tend to be warmer and drier, other factors that can have an effect on overall weather patterns and short term extreme events are less studied and understood, including:
Polar sea ice
High latitude ocean temperatures
Sudden stratospheric warming events
Local snow cover and wind
Several times during the presentation Lester pointed out that even if a winter is on average warmer and drier, there may be periods of extreme cold and precipitation. As an example he reminded us of the winter of 2017-2018. “We had our record snowfall, and it was a cold winter. I'm sure any of you that were here at the time remember that that was a good one. For folks like me who like winter! What a lot of people don't remember is in the middle of the winter, from mid January to early February, it was very warm. All the snow disappeared. And then after that, we got back into some cold and snowy weather. But that is how we roll here. We bounce all around and, even in a cold winter, you're going to have those warm spells and vice versa...there will be fluctuations, that's our climatology.”
El Niño winters can actually be better and wetter for the for the northeast side of the mountains, including the northeast side of the Big Horns and the mountains above Red Lodge. They they can actually do a little better as far as snow accumulation in an El Niño because the winds are more favorable.