40/70 Benchmark

Right.....what is the difference? The forcing.....if it shifts east, winter will be a toaster bath again....but if it doesn't, like most guidance suggests, then we should do at least okay and perhaps very well. Too much obsession over the SST pattern when it isn't congruent with what the atmosphere is actually doing. Again, can that change? Sure. I will say, most guidance had la nina remaining basin-wide with an eastward tilt into November of last season and were still wrong...so, I am not trying to imply that consensus can't be wrong, especially at this stage. This can still easily go either way at this stage...breaking news, I know.

Yikes. Enough of this season....

Through June and first half of July I was ground zero...then it split N and S of me for a few weeks, but now jack is back.

Bullseye was actually about 5-7"mi south of me...through KLWM and N Andover

The why do you have your mind made up that this winter will be awful?

4.01" here on the day.

Probably...winters descending from a solar max usually suck when coupled w a westerly QBO.

Because the ONI reading belies the true intensity of the el nino if the hemispheric gradient is weaker....what you are saying is akin to asking how a 984mb low can be associated with a stronger storm than a 968mb low...the answer has to the with so the pattern upstream....maybe the 984mb low has a 1058mb high over Minnesota (blizzard of 1978), and in the case of the 968mb low, there is a 1022mb high. Same thing goes with hurricanes....it depends on ambient envt. because that is part of the overall system....one storm maybe a cat 5 with a 930mb minimum central pressure, and another a cat 3. You can generalize ENSO events by ONI, nor storms by minimum central pressure....yes, there is a correlation with intensity, but its imperfect because there are other factors at play. ENSO is a complex, multifaceted system of oscillations between seal level pressure, ocean currents and wind across the hemisphere that can't be fully captured by one index...more to it than that.

You wonder if the ensuing winter will be impacted by the tenaciously residual cool ENSO atmospheric imprint in much the same manner that the 1995-1996 la nina was by the residual warm ENSO imprint. In 1995-1996, we observed the el nino like active STJ, whereas this season we could see a residual pull west of the seasonal forcing that may look like a compromise between last season and a traditional canonical el nino forcing regime...the end result would be a modoki like forcing signature (near the dateline) overlaid over a robust, basin-wide warm ENSO SST configuration. Interesting. Back to regularly scheduled super el nino tweets.

Strongest indicator of what, ultimate ENSO peak?

My largest concern about next winter was the volcano, and that is pretty sufficiently assuaged from what I have been reading. Don't see it as an issue.

Good job last year.

So pretty much neutral. I would take that this season....similar to last year.

Your NAO calculation must be nearly ready...where does it stand?

No, it wasn't a record -PNA....though it was decidedly negative. However, it essentially acted like a record -PNA because we had a modest +PNA in January that was biased to the west, therefore it was fraudulent in that it actually bolstered the trough over the west and essentially acted like a robust neg PNA. The DM value belies how the pattern truly behaved. This was another part of the forecast that I nailed, but got punished for it, anyway....I called for a PNA recovery in January and the atmosphere was like, yea, here it is....300 miles west- #upyours

I pick my spots. Feel free to quote it.

Its looks to me from that data that @griteaterposted concerning solar activity, referenced above, that there is a clear signal for negative NAO this winter given the ascending activity nearing solar max.

Not surprising since there isn't going to be a peak that high-

I will say, looking at the QBO at both 30mb and 50mb levels, there are two el nino seasons that really stand out to me as a dead-ringer match at both levels. That is pretty tough to do, as most years may match at one level, but not both. Stuff like this and the solar activity will be relatively important this season given the meek signal given by the ENSO analogs.

I agree.

Bingo, Will....the seasonal guidance was all ++NAO/AO.....and the DM value ended up just a hair over 0.0....essentially neutral. What happened was that we had the December and March blocking that I had expected, but what I didn't realize was that a record PDO would negate. it...."its like raaaainnnn..on your wedding day".

I thought that, as well, but research suggests otherwise.

I don't think the pattern was a slam-dunk ratter last year...anything less than a record -PDO, and we would have had a decent winter. Its pretty tough to forecast that magnitude of an anomaly in a seasonal forecast, since they are usually smoothed products, akin to an ensemble mean.

I have noticed more and more both on this site social media, that you will make a comment in like April and people will latch onto it call it a forecast several months later.