Winter forecast for ’13 a coin toss

WASHINGTON - The weather forecast for this winter is mostly a shrug of the shoulders.

For most of the nation, the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration predicts equal chances for unusual warmth, cold, snow, rain and even average weather. That’s because of an absence of certain global weather factors, like El Nino - a warming of the central Pacific that affects temperatures and rainfall worldwide.

The agency’s Mike Halpert said Thursday that the winter isn’t likely to be too memorable or unusual, except in the South where drought conditions should worsen in the southwest and develop in the southeast.

Forecasters expect unusual warmth from Arizona to Alabama and in New England. The extreme U.S. north, around the Dakotas, is likely to be colder than normal.