Jed Laidlaw is an amateur meteorologist from Athabasca who submits his predictions for each season.
Overall, I was about 85 per cent on the accuracy of my winter forecast. There were four things I got wrong: the mild January, the coldest lows that I forecasted to get to -45 C but the coldest we gotten was -39 C.
I was bang-on on February 2025. We had the longest streak of much colder than average temperatures that started on Jan. 29 and ended on Feb. 20 than spring stated right after. The snowfall was near normal.
What about spring 2025; will it be cold and long or will it be hot and dry? There are two major players that could make spring cooler and wetter than normal: the so called La-Niña and cold Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) could be the major factors to make our spring wetter, stormier, and chiller than normal — if the ENSO (El Niño Southern Oscillation) won’t go to the El-Nino side.
If it does than instead of our spring starting off cooler and stormier than normal and ending hot and very dry due to the La-Niña and its effects on our summer and late spring time.
So what do I mean that it will be hot and it mean hot and dry for the late spring and summer season if I say that La-Niña mean cool and rainier weather? Well, yes, it means cooler and stormier only for winter and early spring (also late fall) because when you have colder than normal ocean surface temperatures it makes more storms and clouds, makes the air pressure higher and makes temperatures on the west coast of Canada and USA rise and push the ridge further north, causing what we call heat domes over the same area that make it hotter and drier in the late spring and summer season.
OK, will it be a La-Niña summer or will El-Niño return? Very hard to know because yes, we are seeing temperatures in the ENSO area rise. That’s good because El-Niño means a moister atmosphere, causing more storms in the equator.
The NOAA weather company is forecasting La-Niña to keep going thorough summer and early fall
However ENSO is in more of an El-Niño setup, but the subsurface is in a strong La-Niña setup, so any uplifting there will bring the El-Niño setup that happen right now to la-Nina.
My forecast will be cooler and rainier to a nice growing season for summertime with El-Niño going on to the end of summer before going to stronger la-Nina setup for next fall and winter.
There is a high probability for La-Niña to continue so the weather models say keep it hot and dry.
My thought is for a wet and cooler spring and summer.
Enjoy the weather – it's the only weather you got!
