All Activity

These are your y/y changes in 27.0C DJFs in Nino 3.4 winters. I've also found this to be essentially four real patterns: Cold South/Warm North, Cold SW/NE, Cool East/Warm West, Cold East/Mild West. El Nino Y/Y Change Nino 3.4 1951 +1.3 1953 +0.4 1957 +2.0 1958 -1.2 1963 +1.5 1965 +2.0 1968 +1.7 1969 -0.6 1972 +2.5 1976 +2.3 1977 +0.0 1982 +2.2 1986 +1.7 1987 -0.4 1991 +1.3 1994 +0.9 1997 +2.7 2002 +1.0 2004 +0.2 2006 +1.6 2009 +2.3 2014 +1.0 2015 +1.9 2018 +1.7 2019: -0.3 2023 +2.4 2026 +3.1? Look at the signals - +2.0C gain or more: 1957, 1965, 1972, 1976, 1982, 1997, 2009, 2023 +1.0C to +1.99C gain: 1951, 1963, 1968, 1986, 1991, 2002, 2006, 2014, 2015, 2018 +0.0C to +0.99C gain: 1953, 1977, 1994, 2002, 2004, 2014 <0.0C gain: 1958, 1969, 1977, 1987, 2019 Big Gain El Ninos (2.0C or greater warmer y/y in Dec-Feb). Coldest Southeast US. Average Gain El Ninos (1-2C warmer y/y Dec-Feb). Coldest SW & NE US. Small Gain El Ninos (0-1C warmer y/y Dec-Feb). +PDO driven / cold East & warm West. Small Loss El Ninos (0-1C colder y/y Dec-Feb than prior El Nino, but still El Nino). All pretty severe Eastern winters, except 2019-20.

NGL for a minute I thought it was your backyard in Stephens City before looking closer.

same - just walked to meet a few friends for a drink, i didn't really smell anything. still VERY hazy though.

My local indicators based on Summer don't support full-on idealized El Nino conditions locally. I have two approaches for that: Low Solar + ENSO Prior + ENSO Current. So ideal is a) solar minimum plus b) big La Nina in prior winter c) big El Nino in current winter. Factors B/C are relational - cold winters here are directly correlated to the biggest warm-ups y/y in Nino 3.4. 2023-2024 was a notable failure - although that's likely due to both high solar and the strong -PDO offsetting a strong y/y warm up to some extent (Nino 3.4 warmed +2.4C from 2022-23 to 2023-24 in Nino 3.4, v. +1.7C from 2017-18 to 2018-19, but 2018-19 had low solar, and a neutral PDO. So with solar/PDO more favorable 2018-19 was much colder than 2023-24 even though 2023-24 was stronger.) 2018-19 netted out to about 2.2F colder than the 1991-2020 average high, while 2023-24 was 1.1 warmer than that 1991-2020 average high. For 2026-27, you have potentially: +3.5C in Nino 3.4 (biggest gain on record, call it -0.4C to +3.1C in DJF y/y) High Solar (75-100 sunspots for July 2026-June 2027) So I'd expect temps colder than 2023-24 locally as both the SST gain and solar conditions are better, especially with the -PDO looking weaker. The biggest misses on this image are also tied to volcano influenced El Ninos (1963-64 Agung is the big cold miss, 1994-95 is the big warm miss (54F) and then 2023-24 (Tonga?). Low solar is more directly correlated to lower lows and less rain/snow here, but it tends to indirectly make highs colder too (El Ninos starting 1963, 1965, 1976, 1986, 1997, 2006, 2009, 2018 are all low solar and very cold here). My other indicator is Summer conditions. Snowy winters tend to follow Summers that are cold in June-Sept, El Nino, with a wet Monsoon, and three years or more since above average snow. Right now, we're on track for: Hot June (-) / Hot July (-) / Mild/Hot Aug (= or -) /Mild/Hot Sep (= or -) Dry Monsoon (-) /El Nino (+) / ENSO + Monsoon (=) / Duration since big Winter (+) The monsoon could still flip. But I doubt we get a cold Aug AND Sept. Best case: There was a signal in the data locally, hottest Marches on record tend to precede cold August unusually often. Same for extreme -WPO/+NAO Marches. That would need to coincide with a wet month. So - Good (El Nino, Wet Monsoon, ENSO + Monsoon, Aug Cold, Duration since big winter) Neutral (Hot Sept) Bad (Hot Jun, Hot July) Nets Out to ~10 inches of snow based on my historical testing, and that'd be accurate within 4 inches of snow in 70%+ of all cases. I need to dig out some of my older research. I have it on a blue thumb drive somewhere.

Model is trash

Oh crazy, if got smoky but they predicted it.

Massive win.

You can really see it in the SOI over the last 30 years. We are breaking it hard now however, but if the N. Pacific Hadley Cell was +SOI driven it should be reversing around now and that has not happened yet but it is mid-warm season Streak of the last 30 years really makes the current -26 30-day that much more impressive. I think I calculated something like 72% of months were +SOI since 1998.

The wet paste low ratio dense snow is the prettiest looking. It clings to everything and whitens everything up better.

Yeah smell is much reduced. Could see 1 star in the sky

The lack of H5 over the central equatorial pacific does indicate a skew towards La Niña the last 20-30 years, which could also be contributing. I don’t have the research handy, but climate models argue that more frequent La Niña will not be the case long term. Possibly a temporarily aberration the past couple of decades. We are probably due for a major decadal regression the other way. Not necessarily right now, but it could happen eventually.

Damage in Tolland? I'll post it in DIT format.

Orangey tint to the crescent moon tonight. Still some smoke up there.

Definitely a hot one today. got to a high of 101.2* at 15:34. Heat Index had to be around 115* or so. Looks like some good chances of rain the next few days.

It still looks smoky, and the purple air numbers are still solidly high, but on my walk this evening, all I smell is weed. Kind of normal.

Just a light haze now, but sooo nice having the windows open.

Automatic sprinklers going, spraying the sidewalk in front of an office building in Merrifield. Complete waste of water, and renders the sidewalk impassible. Does anyone really give a good goddamn if the grass next to the sidewalk is green or brown? I want a nationwide ban on watering anything that isn't A. cash crops, B. subsistence crops, or C. animal fodder. If you don't like seeing brown grass, then tear it out and plant cactus and creosote. FFS.

I fully agree that any storms tomorrow afternoon that form have real severe potential. I don't see smoke being a major factor in our area; HRRR shows most of the smoke (both at the surface and in the column) retreating to the northeast. It warms us up to 95! I think you're on the right track with the warm mid-level temps hurting us, and the mean flow somewhat perpendicular to the lee trough also argues for more scattered coverage.

Will definitely be interesting to see how it progresses through the rest of this year with Super Nino! Battle of forces! If the PDO holds neutral or negative through the Winter it's probably going back to negative after this year. I don't intuitively feel like we will see a lot of -500mb in the North Pacific this year, but I could be wrong!

Actually, I think that makes a lot of sense. As the long term trend of the H3 PDO had been signaling something similar. The biggest question IMO, is do we see a change going into the 2030's. Mixed feelings on that.

That's not true. Other than some air quality models, the RAP and HRRR are the only standard forecasting models that explicitly account for smoke.

The PDO should continue to erratically weaken with this event toward neutral. You probably will see it move slightly positive in a few months from Oct-May, but on net I still expect it to be about neutral. I've always found if PDO & Nino 1.2 are opposite states in October, that's when you start to see rapid regression of the PDO toward Nino 1.2. But the movement toward the 1.2 state is sort of dependent on far out 1.2 is from local averages and the PDO baseline. 1.2 is where water below the surface comes up and fills into the rest of the ocean which changes the dynamics in the North Pacific eventually. With more storminess in the North in fall-spring, its harder to change what areas of water are warmer/colder than average from sunlight/high pressure (almost no sunlight in Fall-Spring in the North, especially if stormy), so at that point you're seeing current driven changes. With only ~8 hours of day light at 50N in winter, relatively rapid fluctuations in SSTs v. means have to be tied to storminess/current changes. Globally, July SSTs look like a 1972/1991/2023 blend to me, with 2015 in there weakly too. 1997 had a very positive +PDO already by July, as did 2014. 2015 had so much warm water in the N. Pacific that is sort of mechanically forced the PDO negative by making the cold tongue east of Japan warm too.

The usual. Congrats eastern PA/NJ.

Today's Highs (smoke mostly cleared north of phl) New Brnswck: 89 EWR: 88 LGA: 88 PHL: 88 TTN: 87 BLM: 86 TEB: 86 NYC: 86 JFK: 86 ACY: 85 ISP: 84