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IMO, I think of the PDO like snow cover. If a large area has deep snow cover (or lack thereof), it can enhance (or weaken) a polar high, which can impact an individual storm track. But it can only do so much. If you have a cutter going into ORD, snow cover in new england or the mid atlantic won’t stop it from cutting. And over time, as we know, those repeated cutters will weaken the snow cover. So think of the super Nino as the pattern driving the cutters, and the -PDO as the snow cover. The super Nino will continuously override it over time with a zonal jet until it flips to +PDO. I know this is not a perfect analogy because El Niños mean less cutters literally. But you get the idea.

Ah, but are we talking sst pdo, or upper air pdo (like the one I posted)?

Good watch for Os fans. Not that we need a dose of reality, but this is good stuff, if not depressing.

Highest gust on record for the summer set in July 1996, correct? They had PL at the time IIRC. And I think this same storm system resulted in record flooding in Quebec.

Coldest I could find outside mtn location in New England is 47 at Fox Brook ME.

Oh please let this verify!

Recall during the Olympics in China, the smoke pollution was never called such? You would get official statements like, "it is mist" or "it is getting ready to rain."

I agree it is not as bad as 2018, but when you talking tenths of deg when it comes to exceeding records, it does matter, and the longer the period, the more this drift is a problem when talking avg temps. 1 F bias does not sound like much for a single day, but it is big over the course of a month, and keeps increasing the longer you go.

Personally, I have a sneaking suspicion that the reason for that is a long term deep multidecadal -pdo state (since 2000). Which is evident on the H300 PDO plots (image below). I'm wondering if this might mitigate the super el nino effects somewhat. As there is research out there suggesting that possibility. Sort of would explain the lack of the north Pacific low thus far... If / when one would develop. It would explain it being weaker than one would expect in a super el nino according to said research. This is also quite interesting...

If it thick enough, it does. Put it this way on an ideal radiation cooling night, if there was a layer of thick smoke at 20,000 ft, do you really temps woild drops as low as if there was no smoke? Yes, the SW/LWIR physics are not the same as WV clouds, but it is still a cover, so to speak. Why did BOS only hit 90 on 7/14 when 97 was fcst?

Today it was DC's turn for thick smoke. VIS at KDCA got as low as 1.25 mi and VV restriction of only 200 ft! METAR KDCA 171252Z 00000KT 1 1/2SM FU VV020 28/17 A3007 RMK AO2 SLP183 T02780167" CoastalWx, remind you of doing TAFs for India? Every night, the VIS like clockwork would drops big time to 1/4 mi or less from smoke at so many airports, not from wildfires, but industrial pollution.

I need a slow moving tropical depression. Just over 7" of rain here the last 4.5 months.

It looks good on you. Lol

Hit 92° at ORD and 94° at MDW today.

Hit 92° at ORD and 94° at MDW today. ...2026 90°+ Day Tally... 11 - MDW 11 - ARR 10 - ORD 10 - RFD 10 - LOT 9 - PWK 9 - UGN 8 - DPA

We need a storm tomorrow as badly as the Wizards need a 50-win season.

I think I'm gonna go with it.

@CAPE I took this pic at the Badlands just for you. I considered making it my profile pic.

69/48. Early fall like Sent from my SM-S921U using Tapatalk

Extreme drought continues here. Updated yesterday. Areas just to my south in the same category have had 3" more than me in the past week, so this seems to be lagging. My area might actually be Exceptional, or those areas should be reduced to Severe.

I'll believe that actually happens when I see it. At this point I have no faith in any El-nino, pattern, or storm to produce even 1 good event here.

600 dm heights/ridges can and are misleading as to heat. It depends on many factors, like one's relative position to the ridge center/axis, overall moisture in and around the high pressure (not all high pressures are dry), mean wind direction, and how the surface pressure is set up/aligned and how strong it is, and time of year/location (land or ocean). And we do not live at 500 mb. And what you say above, a 600 dm ridge parked right over region is not ideal for max or record heat. Having its center located decent distance SW, S , or SE of a given location is best for an area like the East Coast. On 9/16/1989 at 00z, the Chatham MA (CHH) souring recorded a 609 dm height. That is record high for the Northeast, but there was no all-time record heat for Sep from that event on the East Coast. Aug 2, 1975 when New England has it hottest temp on record. The ridge center was to our W, and we had strong NW flow for subsidence warming. Highest 500 heights were our W. Many times when the ridge center is to the W, the downstream sfc high is strong and that promotes a cooler thickness column and onshore winds. In other words, it is not one-size-fits all, and using any one parameter or level to determine sensible wx at the sfc and how extreme it will be or not is not proper meteorology. For heat, one should be looking a lot more at the 1000-500 thickness, as that is much more correlated to temps at the sfc b/c it combines 500 heights w/ sfc pressure. Also, 850 temps, but even that has limits. Cloud cover? Precip? Lapse rates? Type of air mass? You can't treat individual parameters in a vacuum.

Yes, @MN Transplant posted the LWX statement this morning in his "our regions extreme run" thread

Funny. Also contributing is that they apparently have been serving lettuce tainted by the parasite that is causing long term explosive watery diarrhea. Lovely.