40/70 Benchmark

December 2019 had a really nice storm in my area before the season went to hell. Isotherm blew the 2020-2021 foreast and then was never heard from again. Shame.

Easy to see why 2019-2020 was so much worse than 2018-2019.....poleward Aleutian ridge more characteristic of east-based La Nina in the latter and very flat, modoki La Nina like response with a very flat ridge in the former.

An elaborate way of saying "we're due"...agree.

Yes. The reason last season sucked isn't because it was a super-east based el Nino, although the sensible weather result for us was similar, but rather it sucked because the moderate El Nino was vying for proxy with a very hostile extra tropical Pacific and essentially lost. The only real manifestation of El Nino was the active STJ and very wet pattern, but we ended up with that overlayed onto a healthy modoki La Nina type of pattern. This was a more extreme version of what happened in 2018-2019...but that season wasn't as mild and snowless because the Pacific wasn't quite as awful. This is why having a weaker ENSO even isn't neceassarily great news....yes, it means that ENSO won't be so overwhelming that it floods the CONUS with warm air, however, it also means that you are ultimately at the mercy of extra tropical forces, which may or may not be very hostile/favorable. I am willing to bet a more potent el Nino last season would have yieled a better result for us because it would have meant that the Pacific was not as prominent a driver. The forcing for the El Nino was in great spot, which is what led me astray....but it just didn't matter because the MC was driving the bus. This is why incorporating sensible weather into an outlook can help tip you off to issues like that...its like "ground confirmation" for how the forecaster expects the henisphere to play out given the factors at hand.

Yea, it's an adjustment I have made to be more specific and highlight the intended utility of each respective analog....otherwise, you may like an element of a particular season and when you include it in the aggregate seasonal composite, you become involuntarily married to perceived snowfall implications. I think in addition to explicitly stating why you like a specific season, which no one reads, identifying which month you think will bare most resemblance to a given season helps to illustrate it more. For instance, if you think March will be decent, but the season will still suck..... you can include 2018 for March, yet drop seasons like 2002 and 2012 in January and February to guard against folks just focusing on 2018 and interpret that as the forecaster going for a huge season.

Yea, they run high...I was 95, which I think is more representative of the hot spots.

.41" Thought there would be more...

Big boy rains tonight.

I'm near 20 if you count 89...

The 2nd time this year?? Are you on Mount Washington?? 95 today....makes 12 days of 90 or greater with like a half dozen days at 89. Tomorrow will make a baker's doezen-

God, I cannot wait for July to end...heat and Sumner tunnel closure = hell on earth.

What I have come to realize is that you don't know a damn thing until you realize how little you actually know. I thought I had it all figured out back in 2018, then the PAC warm pool, @raindancewx and @bluewavestarted kicking my ass. I was far too focused on ENSO in the past, so eventually what happened is that I lost sight of the proverbial forest through the tress, so to speak. ENSO needs to be examined through a wholistic lens within the context of how it interacts with the surrounding hemisphere. You can have identical ENSO events in terms of structure and intensity, but if the surrounding hemispheric landscape is different, then you could have drastically different results in terms of the seasonal pattern. This is why examining sensible weather and not just teleconnections is so important, which is what raindaince does so well. Nothing, including ENSO is an independent variable operating in a vacuum and this is becoming ever clearer as our climate continues to change.

I know that...I mean generally speaking....you always seem to have a rolodex of peer reviewed articles at your disposal to produce at a moment's notice.

That sounds like anecdotal hogwash. 2017-2018 looked much more favorable pre-season for NE winter ethusiasts due to a myriad of reasonal already stated. I will say that I also thought 2018-2019 was going to be a big winter, however, I probably wouldn't knowing what I know now about the state of the extra tropical Pacific and how it relates to ENSO. We saw an even more amplified version of this this past season.

Chris, from which site do you get most of your articles?

I think both of you are just using the ambiguity of semantics to stand one another's ground out of spite and stubborness. While 2018 was after the apparent tipping point of 2015, the planet has undoubtedly continued to warm at a rapid pace since then.

As far as the Modoki Nina the previous year, most guidance had it as basine-wide, but it shifted west very quickly early on in the season. If you sa that coming, then kudos.

You were right for the wrong reason, though. The only way you are going to become a more seasoned amateur is to acknowledge that and examine why. If you are more focused on guessing the correct numbers on a spread sheet than you are understanding why the hemisphere evolved in the manner that you did, then you aren't going to learn as much. Its like a complex math equation.....when you solve an algebra equation or calculus problem, they are more concerned with seeing how you are arrived at your solution than the actual solution itself because it is this that demonstrates an understanding of the logic and processess at play. I had to accept this back in 2015, when everyone thought I nailed that mega winter....on paper it looked accurate, but I was expecting a huge -NAO and that was all Pacific driven. In order to grow, you need to stop milking your prostate to the end game numbers and focus more on how the atmosphere arrived at said figures. You have come a long way these past few years, but what I have just laid out is the key to the next level.

Well, last season was worse than the previous year.....I will bet anyone on this board $500 that Boston sees more snow than they did last season.

Yea, that is my snowiest March on record. I was very accurate with respect to my thoughts about that season, but I can honestly tell you that I feel like I have grown more as an amatuer forecaster these past couple of years, during which I have struggled greatly, than I did then.

2017-2018 had a lot going for it....I nailed that season and it was pretty clear why NOAA was going to be off during that fall. https://easternmassweather.blogspot.com/2017/11/winter-2017-2018-year-of.html Not the case here, which isn't to say that it can not, or definitively will not be good.....but odds are certianly more heavily skewed towards another dud than they were in 2017.

I don't think anyone can definiteively answer that....at least not the honest folks. In the absence of sufficient data, all we can so is observe relationships and make postulations that are tested as we go along.

Man, it triggers the shit out of me that so many SNE climo sites are AWOL for 1995-1996....my god, what a travesty.

So essentially solar max winter. What is the link to those graphics?

No, 2004-2005 was one of my favorite seasons...I had over 100", but I recalled it as near to slightly above normal, albeit very snowy in SNE.