7December 2020

Most seem positive that we'll see more snow than last winter season, however that's an extremely low bar. Last winter's snowfall amounted to just 0.6 inches in Washington, the third-lowest quantity on record.
Last winter, the majority of forecasters wrongly predicted above-average snowfall, while a few outliers, consisting of the Capital Weather Gang, required somewhat below-average amounts. This year, a couple of forecasters are once again going against the grain, predicting a rather snowy winter. So maybe, to the pleasure of snow-lovers, the contrarian perspective will prevail.
Listed below, we summarize the winter season outlooks from more than a dozen meteorologists and forecasting groups, in addition to the snow forecasts from the Capital Weather Gang and its readers.
Commercial forecasts
We spoke with through e-mail 7 forecasters who own forecasting companies or represent larger companies about their winter season outlooks for Washington. All however 2 anticipated simply 7 to 10 inches of snow for the winter at Reagan National Airport, Washington's official observing area, well off the 1981-to-2010 average of 15.4 inches.
The two outliers have actually seen signs that snow could overperform expectations and require more than 20 inches.
Here's a summary of their outlooks:
- Joe Bastardi, WeatherBell: 10 inches of snow
- and rather above-average temperatures Judah Cohen, Atmospheric and Environmental Research: 9 inches and typical temperature levels
- Todd Crawford, the Weather Company: 7 inches and above-average temperature levels
- Paul Dorian, Perspecta Weather: 20.5 inches and somewhat below-average temperature levels
- Paul Pastelok, AccuWeather: 10 inches and above-average temperature levels
- Matt Rogers, Commodity Weather Group: 10 inches and somewhat above-average temperature levels
- Dave Tolleris, WxRisk.com: 22 inches of snow and average temperature levels
Media projections
Winter season outlooks from the location's broadcast meteorologists were in extremely great agreement, all predicting below-average snowfall and above-average temperatures. Here's a summary of their outlooks:
- NBC4: 4 to 10 inches of
- snow and above-average temperature levels FOX 5: 7 to 17 inches and above-average temperatures ABC7: 3 to 13 inches and above-average temperature levels WUSA9: About 10 inches and above-average temperature levels Capital Weather Gang forecasts Capital Weather Gang's main winter outlook, released Nov. 18, called for somewhat above-average
- temperature levels and 10 to 14 inches of snow in the instant area, which is
somewhat below average. For fun, I
queried specific factors to the Capital Weather Gang for their snowfall forecasts for Reagan National Airport this winter season, which are summed up listed below: The average amount predicted by Capital Weather Gang factors
, 10.8 inches, falls directly in the variety offered in our winter outlook, however the series of 3.1 to 22 inches does show some diversity in viewpoint. Capital Weather Gang reader
forecasts Apparently our readers have become pessimistic about snow after last winter's near-shutout or were swayed by the consensus. Still, approximately 20 percent of readers stay positive about snow prospects and forecast above-average