CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Forecast models suggest it’s going to be a normal winter in West Virginia.
The National Weather Service released its 2018 Winter Outlook this week. The outlook is based on work by climatologists.. Those studies show there’s an equal chance to be warmer or colder than normal.
“We fall either way during the course of the winter,” Charleston National Weather Service Meteorologist Megan Kiebler said. “It just means we have an equal chance to see both warmer or cooler than normal. Typically it’s just going to be oscillating through the course of the winter.”
The 2018 Winter Weather Outlook predicts warmer than normal conditions for much of the northern and western United States. The Ohio Valley, Mid-Atlantic and Tennessee Valley all have an equal chance to see below, near or above average temperatures. No part of the U.S. is favored to have below-average temperatures.
“It’s not ruling out that we’ll get some heavy snow from time to time but that’s going to come down to more of the short-term, what’s going on in the atmosphere at the time,” Kiebler said.
According to the weather service’s precipitation outlook, wetter than average conditions are favored for southern states stretching into Virginia. It’s expected to be drier in the Northern Rockies and Nothern Plains.