Cold air and even some snow blanketed areas of Maine Thursday, but the National Weather Service predictions indicate that Maine might experience a milder-than-average winter.
"From about, maybe New York and northward, that's all above a 40 percent confidence, so that's between a 40 and 50 percent chance that temperatures will be above average,” says Mike Halpert, deputy director of the Climate Prediction Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Maryland.
According to the center's 2018-2019 winter outlook report released Thursday, each New England state is likely to be warmer than average in December, January and February.
As for that other big winter factor — snow — Halpert says the weather service has no prediction for Maine.
"Up in Maine the forecast is actually what we call “equal chances,” which means there's no tilt in those odds, so it's just as likely to be a wetter-than-normal winter as a drier-than-normal winter,” says Halpert.
Halpert says Maine's winter may yet be affected by warming equatorial ocean temperatures in the Pacific, known as El Niño.
According to NOAA, in Maine, the three-month average snowfall in Portland, across December, January and February, is 14.8 inches, in Bangor 16.1 inches, and in Caribou, 23.4 inches.
Elsewhere in the country, the Pacific Northwest has a much greater likelihood of warmer temperatures this winter. The center has given much of the Southern United States, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Chesapeake Bay, a clear chance of a wetter winter, with pockets of drought around the Dakotas and the Great Lakes.
