40/70 Benchmark

I know its not sexy, but its necessary. Akin to why Wakefield was underappreciated with the Red Sox....guys who throw 200 serviceable IP/season do not grow on trees. You can't win without them. The cold source is Tim Wakefield....Pedro's starts would not have mattered without guys like him.

This may explain why la nina hasn't been migrating westward as assertively as guidance had suggested.

All you can realistically ask for as a fan of winter weather in the mid latitudes is a cold source relatively near by. That essentially eliminates the possibility of a wall-to-wall dead-ratter in the absence of some exotically bad luck. I think people underestimate the value in that.

All that matters right now.

I didn't do winter outlooks back then...I started in the fall of 2014. You mean my feelings leading up to storms? My outlook wil be out in a few weeks, but will have one more interim update this week. The gradient may not be too dissimilar to that season, though I would hesitate to predict 130" in central NH again.

Down to 29.3 this AM. Nice.

Being east based helps, as well. It can keep the forcing closer to the dateline.

I saw that. Not happening in terms of strength of la nina, but same periods may remind us of that winter.

Depends how strong....MEI of 1.2 is not a huge deal. I would rather a mod east based event, than a weak west-based. Still some stuff to workout.....regardless, I'm not calling for 1995-1996 neg NAO, so don't get me wrong. Just not last year.

I think the current structure of la nina favors that.

I have to be honest. I am more optimistic than I was a month ago. Only negative is the stronger than expected la nina, but given Tip's bedtime, expanding-Hadley cell erotica, that may not be such a bad thing- SO FAR....la nina has been more deliberate with westward expansion than I had thought.

Its interesting that this hasn't transitioned as quickly west as I had thought.....good sign for the eastern US IMO.

Its tough to predict something as bad as last year.

I do when I feel it prudent to do so. This year, I do not. I will say that the streak of not having any month from DM average negative NAO is going to end very soon.

Nina still looks pretty east-based.

I must be missing something because those bold numbers do not seem that close to me.

Looks like some west-based NAO love in that forecast. 2010-11 like.

Nah....as long as I don't have a client scheduled, we ween.

GFS .8", Euro 1.8"...once an 1" of liquid between globals...

Lots of down time at the new job....pretty well finished with the composite framework of my winter outlook. Just gotta do the narrative and post the remained of the supplementary addendums, which explain the indexes, etc.

Wow...EURO is like 1.8" here.

Well, NOAA updates the MEI. As for the underlined....I agree that it was not as well coupled as 1997. I added to my response too late. I don't agree that the atmosphere around it was not responding...less than you would expect based upon the intensity, sure.

Agreed.....Ordinarily, modoki el nino events favor a neg NAO and AO, but obviously there were more pervasive global factors at play....whether it be the IOD, etc....

Ahhh....a well coupled ENSO event is absolutely one of the factors that modulates the Hadley cell-Yup. That last uber warm ENSO event in 2015 was very well coupled, which is why that winter behaved as most intense el nino events do and it was very mild. That is not a coincidence....it absolutely has an impact on the placement of Hadley and Ferrel cells. The MEI values further evince that the 2015 event was very well coupled: 2015 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.4 1 1.9 1.7 1.9 2.2 2.1 1.9 1.9 2016 1.9 1.8 1.3 I do agree that it was LESS coupled than the 1997 event, which was of comparable ONI strength....if you want to argue that that is due to the Hadley cell expansion, then I am all ears....but I think that you get carried away with this. This season's cool ENSO event is also coupled....with the AS reading just released now down to -1.2.