Maestrobjwa

Yeah definitely much luck involved that year...lol And given how last winter went...not sure I wanna test our luck with a neutral this year...Last winter scarred my hopes in anything trending our way till we get a bonafide moderate Niño. Yeah it's illogical, but ya know...recency bias, lol But at least in a Neutral we don't have to get screwed over by the NS, but...eh....Now you'd think we'd be due for an El Niño in 2019-20, right?...

Wait a minute...so not only do we need El Niño, but we need it to specifically be a weak-modearate AND East based? C'mon....It's like we gotta roll 5 different dice around here, lol Okay, so...what saves us in potentially neutral winter again? Not to mention that even if El DOES come back next year, it could be west-based? (Isn't the western region warmer right now, btw?)

Now couldn't we say though, that Neutrals require more luck than Niños? (But perhaps not as much luck as Niñas...those things are almost impossible, unfair, heartbreaking, start at the 1 yard line kind of odds). And has there ever been a weak-moderate Niño that didn't produce? (I know the strong ones are blizzard or nothing, lol)

Hey you and I posted something at the exact same time...except yours optimistic and mine is inexperiencially not as optimistic...lol What are your thoughts on it?

A (somewhat depressing? Or maybe not?) discussion from the NOAA website.... "In the context of last year's aborted El Niño event, this section features a comparison figure with six other short-lived events during the MEI period of record. Only one of them occurred before 1980, while 2017 joined both 2014 and 2012 in a recent clustering of such events that lasted five five bimonthly seasons or less, with all of them ending before September-October. Compared to last month, the updated (June-July) MEI dropped rapidly to +0.07, ending up right in the middle of ENSO-neutralranking. This means that not a single season has reached El Niño conditions in 2018. Looking at the nearest 12 rankings (+6/-6) in this season, and excluding all cases that departed by more than 0.6 standard deviations in the changes from the previous month as well as three months earlier (March-April), there are only four analogues to the situation this season: 1985, '00, '01, and '08. All four of these cases either continued with ENSO-neutral conditions (2001) or dropped into at least intermittent La Niña conditions (especially in 2008, but also in 2000, and very briefly in 1985). Even among the other eight cases, El Niño was 'not on the menu' (2003 came closest). Compared to last month, the likelihood of El Niño conditions later this year has changed dramatically (from "inevitable" to "very unlikely")." Also goes on to say... "Compared to last month, the odds for El Niño in 2018 have dropped dramatically, not unlike previous aborted events in 2017, 2014, and 2012. Daily updates of the ENSO status can be found at the TAO/TRITON website, showing weak anomalies, or mostly ENSO-neutral conditions in early August over the equatorial Pacific." https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/

Saw someone post in another forum that El Niños have a tendency to fail during solar minimums...Now was 2009 a solar minimum year, or did we hit that the year before? (I'm trying to see if there's a snowier trend in the 2nd winter after the minimum or the first)

#sometimes....But as good as the snow can be, the heartbreak can be bad too, lol

Ya know...when I see your icon on the feed...I already know what I'm gonna see, lol But really...are you one that believes you can speak a good winter into existence, or are you just an optimist in general?

Hi there! I'm from another region (the Mid-Atlantic but I've been kinda scanning the various boards for any winter discussion (since there are general things--especially La or El...that can affect us all!) So I'm wondering if the goalposts of what to expect may range from a Neutral to a weak El Niño....? I mean, is q third consecutive La Niña still on the table, or? (And I'm still not clear on Modoki...)

Now we gotta determine if it's gonna be Winter or "Winter"....Oh El Niño, c'mon you can do it, bro! (And again, neutral might not be good enough...but perhaps at least then we may be able to luck into something...maybe) At least it's a better chance than La Ick....I mean La Niña. La Niña is heartbreaker, El Niño is a dream maker!

*Eric Webb (I just looked him up...couldn't find him at first until I saw "Webb", lol)

Sir please try and elaborate when you make posts like this...what are you basing this prediction on? (And how are you so sure this early?)

Oh for crying out loud...I mean can that even begin to be believable this early? (What is he basing it on? I mean sure, we'd all love for that to happen, but his stuff seems to be hype sometimes...)

Yeah I remember that we only had one or two examples to go by, so...let's hope it won't apply here (of course neutrals are always more hit-or-miss than Niños anyway, but...coming off of this bad stretch of Niñas, I would be even less trusting of a neutral, lol). Wonder if the "floor" or worst case scenario, of this setup would be a neutral that hovers around negative as opposed to positive?

Yeah, in my untrained opinion, definitely seems like this tropical season is gonna be much more hostile to tropical development than last year (someone commented on a high level of wind shear in another thread a couple days ago). But for a better winter than the last two...fine, lol We have been punished enough! (But how many weak to moderate El Niños have followed back-to-back Niñas? And I take it a neutral won't quite do it...Someone (I think it was @psuhoffman) that it didn't work well the last time we had a neutral after two Niñas...That would really suck if it happens like that! But...ya never know around here...But you'd think we're due (and if not this year, next year...I'm keeping expectations extremely tempered.)

So at this point...best we can hope for is a weak Niño, perhaps? (For the winter, that is...)

Oof...Man it's been hard to get El Niño to show up! Two Nina's and a neutral...Okay, Winter 19-20 we'd have to be due for it to come back, right??? C'mon!

Any positive to add to the primordial mid-Atlantic snow soup will be quite helpful...lol

Unscientific opinion: Ohhh, THAT'S why 1996 managed the impossible feat of producing a bonafide I-95 blizzard during a La Niña! Lol (I mean seriously, after watching last season and learning about all the reasons La Nina snows don't work here? That was nothing short of a miracle, hahaha). But seriously, I would like to know more about just how much a solar minimum contributes to the winter...I mean I know causation doesn't mean correlation, but is it at least one helpful variable to add to the dozens of "things that need to go right" that we need that we can add to the list?

Are you serious? Wow...who made Baltimore City the target zone? Lol

And ya know what the thunder says under such a a cloud? "ACME"

Pretty good downpour here in Baltimore now!

Does anybody have any data on winters that followed a solar minimum other than 2009?

Don't even MENTION that, dude...lol After last winter, SLP Great Lakes is foul language!!!

Now it's up to 31, according to the one who tweeted this!