After our wet and chilly month of October, lots of folks were asking me if this meant anything for the upcoming winter.

Here is the answer.  NO!  November has started out with some nice, mild conditions and all indications are that this will be a warmer than normal winter. 

The first image from the Climate Prediction Center shows the latest 90-day outlook for temperatures for November through January.

It shows a huge area of the country with above normal temperatures.  Sure, there will be some chilly to downright bone-chilling days, but, the main theme will be warmer than average.

In addition, here is the 90-day outlook for December through February:

And let's look even further out into the future.  Check out the 90-day outlook for January through March....

You can thank the "El Nino" phenomenon for what we think is to come.  El Nino is the periodic abnormal warming of Pacific Ocean waters.  When this happens, the jet stream tends to get pushed to the north during the winter, and that keeps the really cold stuff up in Canada and it looks like that will be the trend this time around!