Summer is coming: The weather outlook for summer 2019

Tuesday is the last day of April, even if it doesn't feel like it. But that means summer will be making its way to Michiana soon.

But when it gets here, will that summer be hot or cool, wet or dry?

WNDU Chief Meteorologist Mike Hoffman has those answers in his StormTeam 16 summer forecast.

It's safe to say we're pretty much ready for some summer. We've seen a couple of late snows -- although it wasn't a snowy winter overall -- but it looks like we're ready for some warming up across Michiana.

It started with a look at similar years from the past that had weather like we're having right now. Two such years were from the 1950s, and then there were 1977, 1987 and 2003.

The first factor to find were El Ninos. We're in a weak El Nino, so most of the years studied to create this summer forecast were weak El Ninos.

He also looked for similar ocean water temperatures. Where is the warm water? Where is the cold water? In the Pacific and also in the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. That steers everything around the globe.

Then, he pared it all down to similar spring weather, because some of the ones with similar ocean water temperatures had totally different weather than we're having right now.

After finding past years that fit this year's model, it was time to look to see what kind of summers we had during those years.

First, we'll check temperatures. It's interesting that three out of the five were warmer than normal. 1977 was actually near normal. The only cooler-than-normal summer was 2003.

As far as rainfall goes, four out of the five were drier than normal, by about 2 to 3 inches typically. Only 1977 had greater rainfall than normal.

As far as severe weather goes, it's always tough to forecast that. All of these years in Indiana had fewer than the normal number of tornadoes, and four out of the five in Michiana had fewer tornadoes than normal. But, of course, it only takes one day where we have a tornado outbreak to totally skew those numbers.

So, with everything taken into consideration, Mike is forecasting the following for the summer of 2019: As far as temperatures go, we're expecting about 1 degree warmer than normal for a 72.1-degree average between the highs and the lows each day. Interestingly enough, a lot of the similar years had a warmer-than-normal August rather than June, so the higher temperatures that make up the average might be kind of backloaded.

As far as total rainfall is concerned, Mike is expecting 1 1/2 inches less than normal, or about 10 1/10 inches of rain.

Hopefully, the summer weather will allow everyone to get to all of those outdoor plans, yardwork and everything else they are planning to do this summer.