The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has issued an update to its Winter Outlook. The outlook includes a slight change for Southern Wisconsin. As I always do when I write about long-range weather outlooks, I want to caution you as to how much stock you put in them. It's a challenge to get the forecast correct day to day. So, I'm sure it doesn't surprise you to hear that projecting the weather a couple months in advance is, well, even more challenging. Because of that, long-range outlooks are issued by assigning probabilities to 3 categories: Whether the weather condition in question will average above normal, near normal, or below normal. This outlook is for the months of December, January and February, which are the months we meteorologists define as "winter". The average snowfall in the city of Milwaukee is 47.5 inches...and ranges from around 35 to 50 inches across Southeast Wisconsin. The average winter temperature in Milwaukee is 25 degrees. Previously, the outlook called for a... 50 percent chance that temperatures will average ABOVE normal 33 percent chance that temperatures will average NEAR normal 17 percent chance that temperatures will average BELOW normal The New outlook breaks it down like this... 40 percent chance that temperatures will average ABOVE normal 33 percent chance that temperatures average NEAR normal 27 percent chance that temperatures will average BELOW normal So, the updated outlook reduces the chance of temperatures averaging above normal by 10%...and increases the chances of temperatures averaging below normal. That still leaves us with a higher chance of temperatures averaging above normal than averaging near or below. However, before you bet on it being a winter in which temperatures average above normal, consider this: if you add together the probabilities of temperatures averaging near and below normal, you get 60%. Given that the probability of temperatures averaging above normal is 40%...the odds say that there's a better chance that temperatures will average near or below normal than above. Also, keep this in mind: Even if temperatures do average above normal, it doesn't mean that we would not have had any bouts of very cold weather. It just means that the cold stretches would be counteracted by longer, or more substantial, stretches of warm temperatures. The outlook for precipitation (which means rain and snow combined) has not changed. Therefore, we still have no clear indication which way it will go... 33 percent chance of ABOVE normal precipitation 33 percent chance of NEAR normal precipitation 33 percent chance of BELOW normal precipitation I realize none of this sounds very definitive...and that's because it's not. There are few certainties in any area of weather forecasting...and there definitely aren't any in projecting what might happen over an entire season.