If you're looking to predict the weather, forget sunspots, or woolly caterpillars. The Pacific Ocean holds the key to what happens here. National Weather Service Meteorologist in Wilmington Matthew Campbell says that's what long range forecasters look at.
"We look at more of what is going on in the Pacific: Is there going to be a La Nina, or an El Nino? That kind of thing is what we look at," he says. "With La Nina, you generally get cooler temperatures off the coast of South America, versus El Nino, where you get warmer temperatures occurring."
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Campbell says a La Nina pattern is expected this winter, "which generally can give us at least a more active weather pattern here in the Ohio Valley. So maybe more precipitation but in terms of where the temperatures go, it just depends: Do the fronts go through Ohio, do they stay north of us? It’s impossible to tell this far out."
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The first snow of this season is expected to start Wednesday night, with a wintry mix, and continue into Thursday.
"Yeah, November 20 — we’re not too out of sync here," Campbell says on the day WVXU talked to him. "We generally get our first accumulating snow, it can occur late November, so it’s not too uncommon."
Campbell says if it's warmer than usual, we might see more rain than snow over the next three months, although there are no guarantees for either yet.
