NEW YORK - The upcoming US winter will be a bit colder than normal, private forecaster AccuWeather said Wednesday, putting it in line with other outlooks.
"This is not a brutally cold winter coming up, but it is (going to be) colder than normal in the east part of the United States, (and) to the South," AccuWeather meteorologist Joe Bastardi said.
A colder-than-normal winter would mean increased demand for heating fuels like heating oil, which is in tight supply nationwide, and natural gas.
The US Northeast, which is the world's biggest heating oil market, should see temperatures up to 2 degrees Fahrenheit below normal for the winter, AccuWeather said.
The same normal to 2-degree-below-normal call runs for most of the northern US including Illinois, Missouri, Wisconsin and Minnesota, AccuWeather said.
US heating oil supplies are about 16 percent less than a year ago, according to the latest data from the US Energy Information Administration.
National natural gas inventories stood at 3.27 trillion cubic feet, which is 9 percent higher than the five-year average, the EIA said.
Natural gas is used by about 55 percent of US households, while about 8 percent of US homes use heating oil.
The US National Weather Service and other private forecasters, such as WSI Corp. and EarthSat, also forecast a cooler winter than normal.
The NWS last week said week that while the Northeast should be colder than normal this winter, the West should be warmer.
The colder weather forecasts are tied to a weak El Nino, a climatic phenomenon tied to water temperature in the Pacific, EarthSat said in a forecast issued earlier this month.
WSI said earlier this week that December should be warmer than normal for the heating-oil-intensive Northeast but the overall winter should be colder than normal.
AccuWeather's Bastardi said December could be much colder than normal, with the US chill beginning in Texas.
"Texas is where it could get really nasty," he added, pointing to similarities so far this year with the cold, snowy Texas winter of 1963-64.
"December could turn very cold in much of the midsection, then East," Bastardi said, noting that current weather patterns are similar to those preceding the winters of 1963-64 and 1976-77, which were both "brutal temperature-wise."
Bastardi said he was also looking to other winters as a key to what might happen this year, when a cool summer was followed by a busy hurricane season and a weak El Nino. The closest year to that is 1979-1980, which showed a relatively normal winter in the North, but a brutally cold one in Texas to the Mid-Atlantic region.
Bastardi said plenty of typical winter weather was ahead, with the "area from the southern Plains and Rockies to the coastal mid-Atlantic having the greatest threat for much higher-than-normal snow amounts and the chance that the start of the winter is the coldest part for many areas farther north."
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
