Only On 6: Travis Meyer's Winter Weather Outlook

It is time for our winter forecast, and we have a lot of things to talk about.

Of course, in a winter forecast you stop and think, I need snow because we haven't had much. In the last 40 years since 1980, we've been all over the place. In the last 10 years, it has not been a whole lot of fun if you're trying to build a snowman.

Over the course of the winters, it has been a long stretch since we've had a decent snow. It's back to 2014 and then the massive one in 2011. That was when we had over two feet of snow and it came at a time called La Niña. We're going to talk about that.

Meanwhile, we've already had an ice storm and it's not even winter yet. This massive ice storm is the biggest one in history for so early in the season. As we look back over the last 20 years, we had an ice storm in southeast Oklahoma in 2000, and then in 2007 was the last major ice storm around the area. That happened across areas just to the east of Tulsa to Muskogee and extending on up to Grand Lake, where power out for a month. That same year, later in December, Tulsa had a massive ice storm, with people without power for three to four weeks in Tulsa. It happened during a La Niña - does that have any bearing? It could.

Snow up to the north of us also has a bearing on what is going on. Plus, we're always watching the oceans, the Pacific Ocean specifically because that is where we get a lot of our information.

First of all, the La Niña conditions are most important of the equation this winter. It will drive some really cold air from Canada to the south. We also have a little bit of a jet that will come in, the pacific jet, that will help us occasionally keep it very mild because it will be pacific air. So, a typical La Niña winter is a little bit more on the warm and dry side, as well as colder to the north, but unfortunately radical changes can happen.

We know it is a La Niña winter because the blue indicates where the temperatures are below normal. So, we're in a moderate to fairly strong what we call La Niña, and that can cause more hurricanes. This year, we've had the most hurricanes we've ever had and so many records that fell because of landfalls in the United States.

Let’s look at our weather - we missed out on the hurricanes so in terms of tropical weather, we had a normal year.

However, La Niña is just starting. It really started in September, so we don't have a lot of impact until this winter. What we expect is warm, dry conditions across the area, and sneaking into spring, it means more violent tornadoes and potentially more hailstorms. That is not a good combination for our winter, maybe into spring.

A lot of nature helps us out though. When we're looking at what could happen, we love the persimmon seeds. Everybody loves the persimmon seeds. This winter right now, it's a spoon, which means there is heavy precipitation, rain or snow, that kind of goes against the La Niña forecast. It could be wet and mild - the old farmer's almanac, not so cold, not too wet.

So, putting that all together, what is the forecast?

Well, my temperature forecast for the winter is that we're going to be warmer overall, but extreme cold patterns are going to exist for brief periods of time that will knock our temperatures down. We're generally in the 40s in the winter to around 53°.

Then, what about precipitation? Should be lower than normal, but there are exceptions, similar to what the ice storm was in Oklahoma City. Snowfall outlook is unfortunately below normal, but 2011 was a La Niña similar to this, and we got a lot of snow, so extreme ranges are there. That is a look at your winter forecast.