Forecasters Release Predictions for Winter 2015 in Rhode Island

By TOM DAVIS (Patch Staff)

Remember that big, metal snow shovel you bought last year that broke after pushing tons of wet snow out of your driveway?

You may not need to replace it. Or maybe you can go with a lighter model.

Brutal cold and seemingly unending snow blasted Rhode Island last winter. But if forecasters are to be believed, this season is set to be milder overall, particularly during the early part of the season.

“We just don’t know exactly yet whether or not we’re going to see the pattern turn cold and snowy,” AccuWeather Expert Long-Range Forecaster Paul Pastelok said in the release. “There is an opportunity that [the weather] could change on us as we get into February and early March.”

AccuWeather’s prediction, which came in the form of a news release Wednesday, directly contradicts what the usually reliable Farmer’s Almanac had to say just a month ago.

That publication predicted a “snowy and unseasonably” cold winter for the northeastern states, including Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia will also have a ”snowy and bitter cold” winter, the Farmers’ Almanac predicted.

Regardless, the Northeast and mid-Atlantic can expect fewer days of subzero temperatures than last year, according to AccuWeather.

February 2015 was the second-coldest February on record for both the region and for eight states individually, including all six New England states, as well as Pennsylvania and New York.

Farther west, in the Great Lakes region, a lack of arctic air for much of the early and midwinter will lead to a weak lake-effect season, causing snowfall and precipitation totals to fall below normal.

Upstate New York and northern New England are not in the clear where snowfall comes in, however, as rain events along the coast early in the season can translate to snow in the higher elevations, according to AccWeather.

According to the Farmers’ Almanac, the winter of 2015–2016 is looking like a repeat of last winter, at least in terms of temperatures with “unseasonably cold conditions over the Atlantic Seaboard, eastern portions of the Great Lakes, and the lower peninsula of Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, most of the Tennessee and Mississippi Valley, as well as much of the Gulf Coast,” the publication announced.