40/70 Benchmark

Yea, I mentioned a cool down near the end of the month in the Outlook, but it should be transient. "Before entering phase two with a potential slight cool down to close out the month".

Yup.

JMA lends confidence to the consensus IMO...its like having the ensemble mean pointing in a favorable direction when the OP is a bit more precarious.

I expect a VOLATILE PNA that biases slightly + and a volatile polar domain that biases slightly negative....not wall-to-wall arctic. But I think all of this volatility will ensure that winter is not boring. You want teleconnections in flux to get big storms....not a -3SD PV queefing on your face all season.

I agree with you about being skeptical on how good the Pacific looks on the JMA.....I don't expect that. But I do buy the seasonal consensus. Its not blind adherence....these models are meant to be used as GUIDANCE and I have done days and days of research that has validated what they are showing. Maybe they and I am wrong again....I do not think that is the case, but if it is, I will learn from it.

We are obviously in a cool Pacific paradigm that mutes the influence of warm ENSO events....I'm not sure why you expect the same result when a "strong" one is partially negated as when a marginal one is entirely negated.

I can live without having my pipes frozen.....29 and S+ works for me.

That el Nino was a virtual no-show.....I think if anything, this one is also overestimated, which would work to our advantage. It isn't apples to apples....you can't just roll the same situation forward and expect the same result. I honestly think some of you guys have like warm winter PTSD.

I buy what he says about being cautious on a truly cold eastern winter, but I see no reason why we aren't normalish DM with good snows.

The first part I agree with, but the second part is completely stilly and and an emotional vent on your part.

That isn't happening again to the same degree that it did that year. Is the JMA overzealous? Maybe...but there will be no repeat of 2018-2019.

Phil, if I get porked again this year, I will be unhinged...I just can't take anymore of it.

Referring to this event as east-based is akin to calling for snow in DC with an H85 low of Hagerstown just because the surface low is off of the coast. DT would verbally violate you and he should in this case.

Check out November 1997....max SST anomalies and convective forcing is perfectly aligned just as the most intense storm systems stack and have the H5 capture the surface low.

Precisely. This is because you know to examine cyclones from the surface up through the upper levels of the atmosphere. The question that begs to be asked is why are we ignoring the upper levels of an ENSO event? Just as we appreciate the fact that immature extra tropical cyclones are vertically slanted to the northwest with height and factor that into the forecast, we also need to also do so with ENSO. The forecasters considering this El Niño to be an east based event just because of where the max sea surface temp anomalies are at the surface are ignoring the fact that this is an immature, poorly coupled event. It lacks the West-East Pacific pressure and SST Dipole to reach maturity just as some extra tropical cyclones lack the baroclinicity. You forecast storms differently when the upper levels are not aligned with the surface and you need to do with ENSO. We don't get big wind in pedestrian storms because we lack large gradients/baroclinicity.....well, that is why we lack the frequency and prominence of the WWB needed to fuel this El Niño, thus it remains a slanted, disfunctional and immature warm ENSO paradigm.

@Eskimo JoeHumor me for moment as I offer up a synoptic scale analogy, which is a theme in my Outlook. Say you had a powerful surface low off of the Delmarva, but you had an H85 low and over Hagerstown and and H7 low over West Virginia....what would your forecast be for DC?? Would you expect a huge snowfall....I mean, the surface low is off of the coast, to the east, right??

Did you read my work? None of that is true, other than a warming climate, but that doesn't mean its never going to snow again. It also means more moisture unavailable.

I am all for it....

Why are you pessimistic? This seasons is page out of the Mid Atlantic winter playbook.

Don implied to me earlier this fall that he didn't see a strongly positive NAO this year.

Thanks...last year was a great example of how chaotic snowfall is...it's subject to so much variance. Ostensibly, it looks as though I did an awful job last year, but it was actually one of my better efforts underneath the hood, so to speak...the results just weren't there. This as opposed to my first effort back in 2014-2015...everyone thought that I nailed it going for a huge snowfall season in SNE, but its was luck via smoke and mirrors because I was going big -NAO/AO and the opposite was the case. Only thing I got right was the weak-modoki/big SNE snow correlation. Had I incorporated the solar stuff that I do now, back then, I would not have called for the big Atlantic blocking due to the descending solar. Just like I was have been much more tame in 2015-2016 and 2018-2019 if I had been using RONI and MEI like I do now. Its. not about getting everything right, but rather learning from when it goes wrong because it will.

It's funny how some of spend several months at one another's throats arguing over the most subtle of nuances, only to realize that we essentially agree on the big picture @snowman19

Genuine skill and self-esteem is usually positively correlated with humility. It tells you something about the guys who are always on the offensive....they lack either one or both. Look at a guy like Don Sutherland.....should be top 5 on everyone's follow list.