What in the wild world of winter can we North Dakotans expect next?

Last winter North Dakota residents scurried about and dug through and pushed around record snowfall. It wasn't too warm either. For several years prior to last winter, North Dakotans basked in mild temperatures that gave some credence to the shaky theory of global warming. The early outlook for this winter was yuk!

Little more than a month ago, the National Weather Service was predicting a typically cold winter for North Dakota, maybe even colder than normal. The long-term precipitation forecast hinted that the state might be in for a winter to bookend the last one. The Old Farmer's Almanac wasn't nearly as kind, warning Nodaks to prepare for a real corker.

Fortunately, the weather service made a mid-stream correction last month that gave a little wiggle room for Old Man Winter to slip through the cracks and take an urgent vacation. The reason was that El Nino, the mysterious force with oceanic origins, was starting to influence weather patterns here.

Well, guess what? According to the Climate Prediction Center, El Nino is here to stay, and bigger and more beautiful than ever. Warmer, too. If the forecast holds true, people can nearly forget about snow blowers and snow shovels and roof rakes and heating bills that can cripple a budget.

The official version, in Climate Prediction Center language, is that "During October, 2009, sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies increased across the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. The Nino-3.4 index increased nearly a degree with the most recent weekly value at +1.5C."

The synopsis? El Nino is expected to continue strengthening and last through at least the Northern Hemisphere winter of 2009-2010.

The latest outlook, for 90 glorious days, is that North Dakota will experience three months of winter to cherish and maybe even more. The Climate Prediction Center has graphs and tables and expertise to back up their predictions as well.

The remainder of November, and all of December and January, are vividly entrenched in the "above normal" temperature zone by the CPC. Normal highs for Minot are November, 35 degrees, December, 23 degrees, and January, 18 degrees. Normal lows are 19, 7 and 1 respectively.

CPC says we can add a couple of degrees to the norms and that the threat of any real cold spells should amount to little more than a wimper. Minot may even flirt with some winter records headed in the right direction all-time highs. Minot's November high temperature record was reached Friday at 75 degrees. January's recorded best was 59 in 1906. The December high temp record is 66 in 1939, an age when El Nino was known as nothing more than a warm spell.

As far as precipitation goes during the same period, usually in the form of snow, Minot is listed as having an "equal chance" of either above or below normal precip. That's pretty favorable odds, especially when considering that the precipitation norm for Minot in the months of November, December and January is only 2.14 inches total. A good portion of neighboring Montana is forecast to have below average precipitation during the same period.