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Above-normal temps predicted for the area

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By Sheena Dooley | Tuesday, January 02, 2007 | 4 comment(s)

(Larry Fisher/QUAD-CITY TIMES) This trio bundles up to keep warm while fishing on the Mississippi River near the Davenport Levee on Monday.

Thanks to El Niño, winter enthusiasts might not get their fill of snow this year.

The Quad-Cities finished the first of a three-month

meteorological winter season with higher-than-normal temperatures and more precipitation than usual, said Linda Engebretson, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Davenport. In December, the average temperature, including highs and lows, hit almost 34 degrees. That’s 8 degrees higher than the normal average.

Temperatures on Monday reached 42 degrees, falling short of the record of 63 degrees set in 1897.

It also was cooler than the previous two years, in which temperatures hit as high as 49 degrees, Engebretson said.

The warmer weather overall mirrors a yearlong trend, in which the average temperature of 53 degrees in 2006 surpassed the normal average by more than 3 degrees, according to the weather service.

Despite the warmer temperatures, last year marked the end of a drought that plagued the area in 2005, Engebretson said. During that year, the Quad-Cities received almost 18 inches of precipitation. The normal average is more than twice that. In 2006, the area collected more than 37 inches of water from rain and snow, putting it more in line with the normal average.

“The rest of this winter season we are looking at above-normal temperatures,” Engebretson said. “(What happens in the coming months) has to do with what’s going on in the other side of the world. What develops there will affect us later.”

Engebretson attributed the warmer weather to an El Niño that formed in the Pacific several months ago and picked up strength in the last month. The warming effect happens when the eastern Pacific Ocean waters along the Equator increase in temperature. That, in turn, tends to cause deviations in the jet stream.

The last El Niño that had a significant impact on local winter weather patterns happened in 1997-98. El Niño effects can last between five months and two years, although it typically wanes in the summer months, Engebretson said. Until then, she expects milder-than-normal temperatures for the remaining winter months.

“What we’ve had across the United States is very typical of El Niño,” Engebretson said. “Most of the storm track is across the southern half of the United States. As that happens, it pushes warm air and rain our direction. Normally, the storm tracks would be further north, and we’d have more cold air and we’d have more snow.”

The absence of snow and blustery temperatures left some local residents happy.

Randy Huebner, 57, and Mary Conger, 60, of Davenport and Bettendorf, respectively, were among a handful of people out along the Mississippi River on Monday afternoon enjoying the relatively warm weather. The two were rollerblading, enjoying the view of a sailboat behind them and getting in as much time outside before the temperature dropped.

“What a wonderful way to start the new year,” Conger said. “I just am wondering where is the rest of the Quad-Cities enjoying this?”

Sheena Dooley can be contacted at (563) 383-2363 or sdooley@qctimes.com.