40/70 Benchmark

I disagree regarding the bolded seasons...care to explain why? I agree that the other three are poor fits, as 1976 was very meager and 2002 and 2009 were modoki seasons. Forcing looks to set up very similarly to the way it did in those other two basin-wide seasons, though.

I asked him that the other day on twitter...if I remember correctly, he likes the absolute sst match within the ENSO region, despite 1993-1994 falling short of official el nino criteria. It is subtracted to "fix" the PDO, as it was positive that season and is negative this year.

Tough to say...perhaps the furnace that is the atlantic these days promotes even more explosive cyclogenesis, which lowers heights more to compensate. I think the issue that continues to plague our general understanding of global warming and its impact as a society is that we continue to employ too linear of a thought process.

I agree....been trying to explain that to snowman, who apparently doesn't think that the location of the tropical convection is important due to a warmer climate. One of my largest mistakes in the past was focusing only on the ENSO region, but I now realize that the entire equatorial Pacific is crucial unless the significant anomalies are relegated to just the ENSO region.

Yea, best was west of me.

I had that....would have to look at my records, but I think I had like a 1/2".

I think two things doomed last winter. 1) La nina evolved into a modoki event precisely as winter began, which set the wheels of mid winter's demise into motion on the heels of the record RNA screwing December over. 2) Record RNA negating any favorable stretches....this bookended the mid-winter-modoki la nina inferno with December and March porkings. The book-end cosmic dildoes.

Agree, but I am also confident that this isn't going to be a 2009 or 2002 modoki, either...there is a ceiling for this season in terms of snowfall, but I don't see it being an all-out disaster. Of course, those were my famous last words last fall, too, so I could be wrong....but only if the forcing ends up east of progged.

Strong consensus and it make sense to me, regardless of whether the SST max ends up at 120 or 140W.

Yes, which is why you have to consider the west PAC furnace pulling the forcing further west....and again, a warmer climate means a milder outcome, not a completely different H5 evolution given a similar or further west forcing setup. A replica season would wind up a couple of degrees warmer, sure...which could also mean more moisture for snowfall. Don't forget that the vast majority of global warming manifests during radiational cooling nights, which are dry periods.

In all seriousness, that season seems redolent of some of the other stonger basin-wide events that were on the western edge of the forcing envelop...like 1957, 1965 and 1986.

Stand by for a series of tweets featuring Paul Roundy wiping his rear with the 1925-1926 analog lol

#allabouttheforcing

1925-1926 featured average snowfall in Boston and above average snowfall from NYC through the mid atlantic...not a blockbuster, but a good season. This is actually about what I said that I expected....a colder version of 2015-2016.

LOL I honestly wasn't trying to be a jerk...just providing context. I would have posted if it was warm, but it just illustrated my point that its all about the forcing and not necessarily the SSTs.

One thing I have mentioned is that there is greater variability amongst both weaker and basin-wide events....its all about the location of the forcing, which is less impressive in modest events and thus we are often reliant on extra tropical influences to decide the season's fate.

Whopper of a snow event around here 12/5/03. January 2004 was probably the most brutally cold month that I can recall around here, but it was mainly dry.

You were the first on this that I can recall.

This is why I think my outlooks blew chunks in 2018-2019 and 2019-2020.

Yes.

You are also neglecting to consider the surrounding globe and seem to focused on el nino in a vacuum. The fact that the global waters are so anomalously warm means that the el nino will not be as strong as ostensibly suggested by the ONI and forcing will likely be displaced westward due to the pull of the w pac. Guidance reflects this in the vertical velocity potential and OLR progs. It goes both ways...this is why the meager 2018-2019 el nino acted more like a la nina and why last season's la nina was more impactful around the globe than ONI would imply. You can't be a Bill Belicheck in seasonal forecasting....you need to evolve and adapt to the changing times.

I don't see why anyone should care what the el nino distribution looks like during the fall....sure, there is a lag, but I feel like some people exaggerate that. La nina looked great last November....tilted east, then it flipped into December and we had a very mild, classic modoki la nina season.

I posted the 2m temp and precip maps...near normal to a hair above temps and near normal to hair above precip. You stated "December through February would probably suck". I don't agree with your interpretation.