El Niño expected to bring mild winter to metro area including Long Island

The metropolitan region, including Long Island, can expect another mild winter, with warmer than normal temperatures and the likelihood of most major storms steering clear of the area, federal climate scientists said Thursday.

Meanwhile, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Upton said that while he agrees that the upcoming winter will be tepid, Long Islanders should not expect a repeat of 2022 when less than 3½ inches of snow fell in Islip between December and February — more than 20 inches below normal.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center, a division of the National Weather Service, announced its winter outlook for the United States on Thursday, forecasting warmer-than-average temperatures for the northern tier of the country and out west as the El Niño weather pattern is forecast to remain in place through the spring. 

During El Niño, warmer ocean waters cause the Pacific jet stream to move south, bringing a milder winter to the northern and western states and more rain to the Gulf Coast.

Jon Gottschalck, chief of the operational prediction branch at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, said New York specifically can expect "above normal temperatures" this winter.

"For precipitation … as you get closer to the coast, there's higher odds of normal precipitation, mainly for Long Island and New York City," Gottschalck said during an online webinar with reporters. "That does increase a little bit as you go later into the winter in the southeast upstate New York area."

During the previous three winters, New York experienced the La Niña weather pattern, when the surface temperature of the east-central equatorial Pacific Ocean cools, leading to warmer winters in the Southeast and chillier ones in the Northwest.

The NOAA outlook does not project seasonal snowfall accumulations as snow forecasts are generally not predictable more than a week in advance, officials said.

If the upcoming winter is anything like last year, Long Islanders need not stock up on rock salt while snow days at public schools may be few and far between.

Data from the National Weather Service shows that just 3.4 inches of snow fell in Islip between December 2022 and February 2023, far below the average of 24.2 inches.

And it wasn't just the lack of snow.

The average temperatures last winter on Long Island was 38.7 degrees, nearly four degrees warmer than normal for the region, National Weather Service data shows. And just over 11 inches of rain fell last winter, nearly an inch less than what is typical for the area, weather service figures show. 

Weather service meteorologist Bill Goodman said Long Islanders should not expect a complete repeat of last year, as areas that are expected to have above-average levels of precipitation are just south of New York and could still clip the region.

"I think this winter is bound to be different from last winter when it was pretty mild and we didn't see much snowfall at all," Goodman said. "To have a repeat of that seems very unlikely … You can still have a winter that's overall on the mild side and still get snowfall."

The winter outlook also projects widespread extreme drought conditions to persist across much of the south, northern Rockies, northern Great Plains, and portions of the desert Southwest this winter.

But the downstate region of New York, NOAA said, is unlikely to face any significant drought conditions this winter.

By Robert Brodsky

robert.brodsky@newsday.com@BrodskyRobert

Robert Brodsky is a breaking news reporter who has worked at Newsday since 2011. He is a Queens College and American University alum.