40/70 Benchmark

Exactly. Its just due to lower levels of solar irradiance. You will see me go furnace if I think the ONI will get over 2.0...no questions asked. The forcing will only dictate likelihood of a random big snow event from the latter Jan into Feb timeframe.

I am speaking of the NE US...I know el nino favors cooler conditions to the south. But if we get an ONI over 2.0, I would comfortably bet body limbs that its at least +3F DM in the NE, at the risk of overlooking the winter of 1877. I would also feel relatively comfortable at betting on at least some small positive departure to the south.

You know what I mean....super el nino events are a lock to be exceedingly warm.

Just to be clear, no one is arguing that an eastern-based el nino of appreciable intensity will not be warm and likely have below average snow....perhaps well below. But the only questions are whether or not this el nino will remain heavily eastern based throughout winter and whether or not it will become prohibitively powerful....ie ONI 2.0+. If the latter is true, it doesn't matter a great deal whether or not it remains heavily eastern based or not. It will be very warm, but a basin wide super event increases the likelihood of that stray juggernaut.

Super nino would be warm for everyone, but the odds of a freak juggernaut are enhanced...especially near the coast/mid atlantic.

Probably because it has such a low starting point.

I had a blocky December into January, and a blocky March. January was obviously less blocky than I thought, but I nailed the AO/NAO for the DM period in the aggregate because the December block was very intense. I wasn't quite aggressive enough with the PDO and thought la nina would be basin wide, but it ended up modoki, which is at least partly why I think mid season was so warm. I did have huge Jan thaw and a very mild Feb, but I didn't think Jan would be wall to wall torch like it was. Can't stress how well raindance did....very impressive.

Its tough not be biased....we have all been guilty of it at one time or another. Its good to try to think of reasons why the alternative perspective could end up being right in an effort to guard against that...we are all human and its difficult not to let bias rule the day with respect to a subject that we're passionate about, like weather.

A very warm winter is very possible next season and there is plenty of support for such an outcome.

I predicted slightly below normal snow and above normal temps just last year. I also just said if its an east based el nino, then it will be warm...all I have implied is its too early to rule out basin wide. All you ever do is vomit twitter quotes hyping up el nino and/or -PDO. Perhaps I am wrong, but you seem to be more interested in promulgating an agenda than offering actual insight.

I'm sure those were lined up next in snowman's queue.

That is what composites and explicit forecasts are for.

It also didn't help that most of the cold was on the other side of the globe, and what cold we had here loaded west due to the juggernaut PDO...... in the absence of any poleward Aleutian ridging due to modoki la nina, there was no mechanism to get it to bleed east. Raindance had it down...aside from the NAO, which was ultimately rendered useless last year. I have my post mortem write up just about done....probably post this weekend.

If you are looking for an analog to act as an exact replica of any given season, then you should probably reevaluate your conception of what an analog actually is regardless of the climate era. Its incumbent on the forecaster to utilize discretion to in extracting the value from an analog. For instance, I like 1955-1956 last season....was it a carbon copy? No.....but there was value in that we had a hell of a block in March, as well as an extreme cold phase of the Pacific. Of course, it didn't work out in terms of snowfall, but that is often the case because snow is subject to so much variance. My outlook was trash at the end of the day, but it doesn't mean there wasn't some value.

Obviously the Pacific is more important at the end of the day, but anything short of a historic PDO and last winter would have been pretty good with those blocks. Get that again this winter and it will be different. I feel like there will be this ground swell of claims that the NAO is useless when in fact it's really just that the Pacific is more important. Get those blocks in place with an el nino and pedestrian -PDO and see what happens. Of course, the trick is that if el nino is heavily east-based and appreciably potent, then we probably will not get the blocking.

I feel like the cold was more due to the modoki nature of some of those seasons than the fact that it followed a cold phase PDO, but it may help to mitigate some of the warmth with el nino if we begin with from the opposite base state.

Yea, this is why I was saying a 1986-1987 type of outcome is the ceiling. Blocking is going to be crucial this season.

Agree.

I don't agree with this...you just need to know how to use them and remain mindful of said changes.

33.6

Well, that is a no-brainer....there is a reason el nino offers higher end storm potential on average than la nina. 1) More of a STJ prescence. 2) What you were alluding has to do with Tip's compressed geopotential medium....ie heigher se heights. That is less likely to be an issue during an el nino, so we aren't as prone to that shearing influence when either an NAO block flexes during west coast troughing (see December 2021) or when we have lower heights over the northeast while there are higher heights over the se...obviously el nino favors lower heights down there. This will be illustrated when I do my el nino work next month.

I feel like its going to become in vogue to dismiss the NAO, but I think it will hold a lot of weight next year. There is no way that heights over the west will be as low as they were last season, so I'm pretty sure big blocks won't be so at risk of going to waste as they did last year...trick will be to get them again next season.

Its a passive aggressive jab. But I'm not sure I would say they are usually dry....warm, sure.

Something has to give soon, whether its this year or not...but dating back to 1956, my worst 5 year stretch is 87-88 through 91-92, when I averaged 38.5"....this stretch from 18-19 through 22-23 I have averaged 45.1". But I have never had six consecutive seasons of well below average snowfall dating back to 1956....1992-1993 ended that drought with 97.3". On the front side of that stretch was 86-87 with 77.7"....I could envision something like that as the ceiling next year if its basinwide. But even if it isn't....the juggernaut east-based events have a tendency to deliver one heavy hitter.....I had 60.2" in 82-83. If we get one more terd out here, I would have to imagine 24-25 ends it.