Rukavina's Extreme Weather and Climate Blog

One of the most popular questions the meteorologist gets coming out of an extremely cold/snowy winter is "What does this mean for summer -- will it be really hot?" The short answer to that question is that one really doesn't have anything to do with the other unless the overall weather pattern has been unchanged for months. The longer explanation takes into account many other factors and is set forth in this blog. :) To get things started, let's take a look at the past 50 years or so and find out the result of comparing winters and the their following summers. In a majority cases, winter that were exceptionally cold were followed by summers neither too cold or too hot, rather just average. (We can call it a Goldilocks Summer, see graphic to the right.) There seems to be a slight advantage for equal chances of a cold, warm, or average summer when winter averages warmer. (See graphic to the left.) Looking to our past can be interesting but it hardly determine