Environment Canada is predicting a mild winter for Southern Albertans.

 

We may not need to pack the long johns as often as usual this winter.

David Phillips, the chief climatologist with Environment Canada says the El Nino means this winter should be milder than normal.

He says that means less snowfall in the mountains for the second straight year and that's not good news for agricultural producers.

"Right now you want to be recharging the ground water, the pot holes and sloughs and the dugouts are rather meagre and we want to bring them up capacity so it provides a bit of a cushion for growing and ranching next year," Phillips says.

He admits snowfall is harder to predict but the El Nino is very strong and doesn't look like it's going anywhere so temperatures should be milder than normal.

"This warm pool of water is a super case, it's a huge phenomena it generally means for Alberta, for southern Alberta particularly a milder than normal winter," he says. "When I looked at High River and Calgary and areas at times when we had these super El Ninos, these are the very large pools of warm water in the Pacific equatorial region, I mean thousands of kilometres away from High River, but generally when we get one of these intense, long events they tend to provide milder than normal winters."

Phillips says since 1950 there have been seven "super El Nino's' and six were warmer than normal, while one was actually colder.

As for snowfall two had more snow and five had less.

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