Winter’s here, where’s the snow?

Members of the First Unitarian Society of Schenectady walk the labrynth as they take part in the annual Winter Solstice Observance & Celebration on Wednesday.

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The winter of 2011-12 started at 12:30 a.m., making today the shortest day of the year.

From here on, days will slowly start getting longer as the sun gradually climbs higher into the sky of the northern hemisphere.

While weather experts aren’t sure what kind of winter it will be, highway superintendents like what they have seen so far.

“We have been blessed with a kind and gentle November and December,” said Carl Olsen, Schenectady’s general services commissioner. Olsen said November and December of 2010 were difficult months of ice and snow that almost emptied the city’s salt sheds and overtime coffers.

“This season, I’m starting with a full salt shed,” he said.

The warmer than normal fall allowed road crews to finish late construction projects and prepare their plow trucks for the coming winter.

Brian Montgomery, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Albany, said based on information from the national Climate Prediction Center, the

winter of 2011-12 in the Northeast “can go either way.” He and his colleagues feel the temperatures this winter will be average or below normal.

“As for snow, I don’t think any of us here have a good handle on it,” Montgomery said.

The AccuWeather long-range forecasting team “expects a brutal winter in the United States with the worst in terms of snow and cold targeting the Midwest and interior Northwest,” according to a statement from the private weather service headquartered in State College, Pa.

Other parts of the country, including the Northeast, are not off the hook. “Above normal snowfall is also forecast for the interior Northeast and northern New England,” said AccuWeather.

The key factor behind the prediction is a weak to moderate La Nina condition.

“La Nina, a phenomenon that occurs when sea surface temperatures across the equatorial central and eastern Pacific are below normal, is what made last year’s winter so awful for the Midwest and Northeast,” said Health Buchman, a meteorologist for AccuWeather.com.

Montgomery of the National Weather Service said the Capital Region can be influenced by the North Atlantic Oscillation more than the La Nina conditions. The NAO can, when it spins a certain way, bring bitter cold from Greenland and Canada down into the Albany-Schenectady-Saratoga area.

AccuWeather experts predict the Northeast will “likely be marked by a lack of long-lasting Arctic cold.”

“However, there can still be cold snaps with below normal temperatures,” the prediction says. “Overall temperatures are expected to average out near normal to just above normal.”

“With a storm track favoring more storms cutting across the interior, above-normal snowfall is more likely across the interior Northeast,” AccuWeather says.

Montgomery said the warm fall, especially the warmer than usual December — it was in the 40s on Wednesday — has been tough on the ski areas.

Will there be a white Christmas?

Montgomery said there could be some snow coming in tonight into Friday morning, but only an inch or two in most areas. The temperature will then drop into the 20s at night and 30s during the day, though, so the snow could stay through the weekend.

Christmas Day is expected to be cloudy with some snow flurries and a high in the mid-30s.