Snow outlook now?

Been following some of the very interesting threads started last month about how likely it is that we'll catch up (to some great extent) with average snowpack by the end of the winter season.

Any update on how things are looking now, January 21st, still very low snowpack and a week of dry, warmer than average weather forecast? I know it's anecdotal but in my Seattle neighborhood the trees are budding and bulbs are coming up nearly a month ahead of schedule. Does "mother nature" know something we don't about the likelihood of continued mild weather? Hopefully things turn around!

My silver lining (not that I encourage you to paddle out is that the surf's been really good this winter - a lot cleaner than the usual stormy mess winter storms bring. But I'd trade it for some more powder days ...

Amar, please report to the nearest white courtesy telephone...

I was just going to send Amar a note, too. With the storm cycle and cold front hitting the east Coast and midwest again, I'm wondering if we're on about a 30 day cycle of somekind.

If so, might we look forward to another set of graphs predicting a big dump of snow in 12 days? (Thats about the time I head to Canada for 4 days at Ymir Lodge ).

Amar, maybe you could even invent something to get my hopes up...

snow blowers have already been invented.
b

I'm no expert, I just check in here every once in a while (NOAA 8-14 day forecast). Seems fairly accurate in the few years I've kept tabs.

Looks like more of the same, normal (precip) to warmer (temps) here abouts. Head east (east as in out of state) for snow...

As Stefan said, the Climate Prediction Center is charged with making the best predictions they can.

www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/ , their outlooks go as far as 3 months out. "EC" denotes equal chance of above or below normal precip, and temperature. They have equal-chance predictions at the 1 and 3 month scales for both temperature and precip.

The forecast discussion, www.wrh.noaa.gov/sew/get.php?wfo=sew&pil=AFD&sid=SEW , continues to state that the models have high pressure into next week. A little storm-optimism crept in yesterday, but it's receding again this morning.