Will We Have A Warm Summer This Year in Southeast Minnesota?

After several long, cold and snowy winters, it seems we finally caught a break this year. But will our luck hold out for this summer of 2016 here in southeast Minnesota too?

The Weather Channel recently released its long-range outlook for this summer's weather across the country, and it looks pretty good-- if you like above average temperatures, that is.

In fact, according to the report, our neck of the woods is included in an area of the country that could see "much above average" temperatures this summer.  Dr. Todd Crawford, chief meteorologist at The Weather Company's Energy division explains why.

"There is a historically large amount of background global warmth around that will likely skew all temperatures towards the warmer side for the next few months, as the impact of the El Niño works its way through the system; thus it will be generally difficult to forecast widespread or significant below-normal temperatures through the summer at least," the report noted.

So, if you like hot weather, looks like this summer could be your year. Our past couple of summers seemed to be cooler than usual -- it seems like we only turned on the air conditioning at our house a few times the past couple of years -- so I'm ready for a little heat!

Interestingly, this outlook for the winter of 2015-16 (which was released last October) predicted "Above-average temperatures are favored across much of the West and the northern half of the contiguous United States." Which seems to have been the case -- we did have a pretty mild winter this year -- so hopefully they're prediction for the summer will be just as accurate.