Back to School: Kids Should See More Snow Days This Year

With the next rapidly approaching, students are likely already wondering how lucky that they'll get with snow days.

Good news for them (maybe not so much for school administrators) is that AccuWeather.com reports that B-W students will likely get more snow days this school year than they did during the previous one.

This past winter, at least nine of the United States' snowiest cities had less than 60 percent of their average snowfall (according to USA Today).

So how is the intensity of this coming winter being measured?

"The presence of El Niño or La Niña—and their strengths—is used to project how active the winter season is going to be," AccuWeather.com reports.

And AccuWeather.com long-range meteorologists are projecting a weak-to-moderate El Niño by late this summer.

For kids praying to hear that school's out for a snow day, the weaker the El Niño the better. Weak El Niños have brought snow-packed winters to most major Northeast cities in the past, AccuWeather.com expert Senior Meteorologist Jack Boston said.

"Historically, both strong La Niñas and weak El Niños have produced higher-than-average snowfall in the northeastern U.S.," Boston said.

In contrast, "Weak La Niñas and strong El Niños historically bring lower-than-average snowfall."

A weak El Niño in 2009 led to record December snowfall that year in Philadelphia, which got slammed with 23.2 inches of snow—a year's worth in one day for the city that usually receives 20.5 inches over 12 months, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

What else is in store?

The AccuWeather.com Long-Range Forecasting Team is predicting an average season of about five hurricanes and 12 tropical storms—less active than this past year's seven hurricanes and 19 tropical storms. Hurricane season peaks in September and officially runs until Nov. 30.

The Atlantic Hurricane season affects the southern U.S. coast from Texas to Florida, as well as a large portion of the eastern coast from Florida all the way up through North Carolina, and can even impact cities as far north as New York or Boston.

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