CAPE

Not that anyone should be based on what any of these climate models are depicting at this point, but this pattern should look familiar. Hard to bet against the 3 month DJF h5 mean looking something like this when all is said and done.

Some may try to claim one or both of the last 2 winters were a Nino, but the atmospheric response was anything but. Technically, 2018-19 was a weak Nino, but it was puny. For all practical purposes, the last 2 winters were warm neutral.

That may in fact be the long term trend, but there are always going to be variations, and other influences will likely mitigate that from time to time. At some point everything will align and the Pacific will be "favorable" again. That will probably happen 10 times before we see the next -NAO winter.

ENSO state is a major driver, so especially when it is clearly in a Nina or Nino phase(moderate to strong), there are established, reliable correlations that can be made about the general pattern. I cant see that suddenly "not working" anymore. Last winter the ENSO was warm neutral and the Pac SSTs were pretty warm everywhere. The winter before, the Nino was super weak and undefined, and there was little atmospheric response until very late. MJO can dominate under those conditions, and especially last winter we saw that, with the strong tropical convection persistently where we didn't want it.

lol Pretty much He parrots what other people say, but does it very very badly.

It constantly vacillates between pure crap and pretty decent, and everything in between. Pretty useless, like all of these LR climate models, at 3-4 month lead times. That being said, we pretty much know what the baseline is at this juncture for the winter months, so start from that. (expect total suckage as the default)

Fwiw, the new edition of the CanSIPS is out, and it still looks hideous for the winter months. Looking at h5, no HL blocking at all, big EPAC +height anomalies, +heights in the eastern third of the country. Torchy..

In theory, although it seems nebulous to me, a QBO that is trending negative heading into/during the winter months, favors a weaker PV, and increases chances for a -AO/NAO, in general. During a Nina, a +AO/NAO tends to be favored, so I suppose the idea is that if the QBO is extremely negative, and the La Nina event is on the weak side, those tendencies can be mitigated, and the chances of HL blocking episodes increase. I will leave it to someone else to dig into the data for previous Nina winters to see if this has any validity.

I brought this up on the previous page, but the only info I found was from DT, and he has some of the years wrong. I will look at the links you provided. What I recalled was- wrt La Nina winters- there is a correlation to cold eastern US when there is a very negative QBO during winter, specifically during a weak Nina. It appears we are heading towards a weak Nina for fall/winter, but not so sure the QBO is going to cooperate(looking at current trends), so this may not matter.

Kinda goes without saying, but cant beat the combo of latitude and elevation, not to mention having a persistent mechanism for orographic lift. With the crappy pattern of last winter, even at this latitude places like Canaan still managed over 100" mainly because of the persistent NW flow induced snow. That usually happens even on the backside of mild inland tracking rain storms.

LOL last winter. The antithesis. We should probably get used to it.

Epic HL blocking for the entire winter. It seemingly occurred so easily...effortless. It's like a fantasy now- something that simply cannot occur. Extinct.

Just looking back at 2017-18, the QBO(u30) was moving into the negative phase in Fall and stayed significantly negative through the winter. That winter was decent wrt cold outbreaks/anomalous cold, at least for Dec and Jan. I think that was technically a moderate Nina, but the QBO influence on the tendency for cold that winter may have been real. The previous winter, also a Nina, QBO was moving into positive territory and stayed positive, and it was more the typical Nina eastern US torch. Again this is cherry picking one index in isolation, and so it is always difficult to determine the actual impact. The character of the Nina events were quite different between those 2 winters.

Probably not worth doing any reanalysis at this point, but maybe he included 'cold' neutral years as well as weak Ninas. The sensible impact of the QBO generally seems nebulous, unreliable, and likely gets overwhelmed by other factors in reality. Looking at the 30mb trends, it also appears to be moving in the "wrong" direction currently.

Here it is- From DT at WxRisk.. The context is QBO values from -10 to -20 for DJF.

Yes in general, but I am pretty sure I saw somewhere that during a weak Nina, a significantly negative QBO for the winter months mitigated the usual warm departures for the eastern US. I will see if I can find it. Either way, it doesn't look good wrt the QBO, as it appears it will be heading into positive territory going forward.

Most guidance seems to favor a cold neutral or a weak Nina at this point. NOAA did issue an official La Nina watch a few days back, with a 50-55% chance for fall and winter. Probably a decent baseline to start with when you start digging into the historical data and analogs. QBO looks like it may have hit its negative peak and is heading back towards neutral. If that trend continues into fall that's not a good sign. Pretty sure there is a correlation between a significantly negative QBO during the winter months, and colder temps for the eastern US during a weak Nina.

Now is the time for optimism. We get to be all wide-eyed and dopey, trying to convince ourselves that winter really could bring the goods. These are good times. This period will last until about mid November, after which the writing will be on the wall, all hope will be lost, and all that will be left is the race to the Panic Room to get a luxury suite at the Reaper Resort before they are all taken.

We can get good outcomes in a Nina, even without a -NAO, which is generally not favored in a Nina winter. I would not expect a particularly snowy winter, but the 2 most recent Nina winters did produce some decent snow, relatively speaking, including big snow events for the coastal areas of the MA and NE. Nina winters can be especially frustrating for the MA, but not an automatic shutout by any means. If the timing had been a tad different, this could have been a more memorable period for a larger area.

We only care about the NAO during the winter, so this historical series gives you a good idea of the long term values. NAO has been predominately in the +phase during the winter months over the last 50 years, with generally more instances of strongly positive episodes in winter compared to prior periods. With the recent unfavorable trends in the Pacific patterns during winter, we might be phucked in the MA for awhile. Go north. None of this stuff matters much relative to cold and snow up in NH.

Is something like that even meteorologically possible anymore?

Yeah it looks like we are going to have a weak Nina or a cold neutral during winter at this juncture. This is recent stuff, from a few days ago- https://iri.columbia.edu/our-expertise/climate/forecasts/enso/current/?enso_tab=enso-cpc_plume

^Easy to imagine how this will go. That EPAC ridge/downstream trough position looks precarious.. but a monster -NAO will save us this time! I wont bother posting it because it sucks beyond words, but the CanSIPS has the h5 look that will probably be much closer to reality, based on our recent run.

CFS has been on a "good" run lately with looks like these. No qualifiers necessary. We all know the deal with long range climate models.

Lets get this (pity) party started.