Georgia’s 2015 Winter Forecast: Wet With Severe Storms

But those winters are relegated to the annals of history and this year we’ll find ourselves anxious more about rain than massive amounts of snowfall, says Carl Erickson, a senior meteorologist with AccuWeather.

However, milder weather in the Northeast could change in February and March, and upstate New York and northern New England may not see any of the warmer temperatures at all, Accuweather.com said. February 2015 went down in the record books as the second coldest February in Boston.

Florida, in particular, faces a high risk of tornadoes because El Niño, best known for knocking down hurricanes in the summer, tends to trigger severe weather outbreaks in the winter.

Regardless, the Northeast and mid-Atlantic can expect fewer days of subzero temperatures than previous year. “It’s going to lead to developing streams and rivers that are not supposed to be there, and you’re going to get localized street flooding in the cities”.

The upcoming winter will be influenced by an intensifying El Nino effect, bringing relatively mild weather to population centers in the Northeast and drought relief to California, according to AccuWeather’s 2015-2016 U.S. Winter Forecast, which was released Wednesday.

The almanac, which asserts it is traditionally 80% accurate, uses a secret forecasting formula developed by the founder, Robert B. Thomas in the 18th century.

In the southern Plains, the building El Niño will dictate an active storm track, meaning the region could end up with above-normal precipitation, forecasters said.

Drenching rains in California may lift drought conditions but will also raise the possibility of mudslides, Pastelok said. The El Niño, which creates a fast west-to-east airflow across the United States, will effectively trap the colder Arctic air over Canada, leaving us with warmer temperatures, but more rain. Fourteen of the fifteen hottest years on record have occurred since 2000, so this is less an outlier and more part of the trend of a warming planet.