ST. LOUIS PARK, Minn. — At Frattallone's Hardware in St. Louis Park, assistant manager Daniel Bougie knows it's never too early to think about winter.
"The temperature can drop any time. We never know up here," Bougie said. "Early to mid-September, that's definitely when the store starts turning over."
As rain fell steadily on Monday, Frattallone's had a variety of snow blowers, shovels, scrapers and other common winter items on display.
In a matter of weeks, we could be talking about ice or snow in Minnesota — although the latest winter outlook from the Climate Prediction Center shows the possibility of milder weather for our region. According to the report, Minnesota is expected to see above average temperatures compared to a normal year and either average or below average snowfall.
Much different than last winter.
"That was one of the wettest winters on record. If you can handle that, I tend to think you can handle this weather just fine," KARE 11 meteorologist Ben Dery said. "Don't get me wrong. We still will see a lot of snowfall. You'll still have to bust out your snow blower, and we'll probably see several sub-zero days. But in an El Niño winter, it tends to be less harsh."
While those El Niño trends may drive warmer trends in the Pacific Northwest and Upper Midwest, they may also create wetter weather in the southern U.S.
In Minnesota, most of the state has a 40 to 50 percent chance of having above-normal temperatures this winter.
"It's a small piece of a much larger puzzle," Dery said. "An El Niño winter loads the meteorological dice toward less snowfall on average and generally warmer temperatures on average."
At Frattallone's Hardware, though, it's still business as usual.
Because a warmer and drier winter in Minnesota doesn't mean "warm" and "dry."
"It's always good to have a prediction to go by. Drier would mean less snow considering we got dumped on a few times later last year," Bougie said. "It's tough to know. We never know until we're actually in it."
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