East US Nov 2011

It was nearly unanimous; much of the commercial meteorology world thought winter 2011-12 was going to be blisteringly cold. In October, most of the widely utilized and reputable commercial weather forecasters predicted that the months of November and December would exhibit abnormally low temperatures, particularly in the Midwest and East U.S., and that the winter of 2011-2012 would be similar to or more severe than the past two extreme winters.

TempRisk presented a different picture. Starting early November, TempRisk analyses repeatedly indicated elevated HeatRisk for the East and Midwest U.S. that persisted for almost all of November and December (and even extending into the first part of January).

To be honest, the EarthRisk team was nervous! TempRisk was in stark contrast to the “consensus view” from the commercial weather prediction community. TempRisk is a purely objective algorithmic approach to analyzing global weather patterns but we wondered, would the data supporting warmth be wrong? We watched; we waited.

TempRisk’s data stood the test. During the months of November and December 2011, the TempRisk Matrix consistently showed HeatRisk scores as much as 20 to 30 percent above climatology. While not dramatic, these numbers are significant and relevant because they showed what many weather forecasts did not: Early winter in the East U.S. featured an elevated risk of WARMTH … not cold.

A warm start to winter in the East U.S. surprised a lot of people, but for our energy analysts and energy broker clients using TempRisk , 30-day advance knowledge of this trend was money in the bank.

Figure 1Figure 1 : The HeatRisk matrix for Nov. 1, 2011 to Jan. 11, 2012 shows persistent temperatures 20 to 30 percent higher than climatology.

Figure 2Figure 2 : The HeatRisk index for the East U.S for winter 2011 through mid-December shows that temperatures exceeded our HeatRisk threshold (an EarthRisk measure of extreme heat) for much of November and early December and some days were nearly 3.5 degrees warmer than the HeatRisk threshold.

Figure 3Figure 3 : The ColdRisk index for the East U.S. through mid-December shows no events crossing the ColdRisk threshold (an EarthRisk measure of extreme cold).

Figure 4Figure 4 : The HeatRisk Multi-day scorecard summarizes all TempRisk signals with a forecast lead time longer than 15-days. Statistical signals have been persistently indicating an elevated HeatRisk for the East U.S. for the start of winter 2011-2012.