roardog

How about Montana in the darker shade of blue? lol

I think our palm loving friend is wrong this time.

Hopefully it’s a slow spring melt.

Normal highs in Chicago are approaching 50 now and mid 40s in Milwaukee. You're acting like a 55 degree day in chicago is a big deal. There's still a giant pool of well below normal temperatures in Canada so there's potential for some nasty shallow cold on NE winds even if the upper heights aren't low or the 850 temps aren't that cold. If you were talking about St Louis or Kansas City then that's a different story.

I probably should have been more clear in my post. I was referencing the MJO impacting the developing Nino. The strong phase 7 and 8 in 2023 was looked at as an indication that the Nino could get very strong. This year it's in 7 and 8 again but weaker. I just thought it was interesting.

March 2023 had a very strong MJO is phases 7 and 8. This year it's also in phases 7 and 8, just much weaker. I wonder if that means anything.

There’s a lot of things that make a very strong Nino look likely but I can’t shake the fact that it’s only been 3 years since we’ve had one and the PDO is still negative. March isn’t over yet but right now the 30 day SOI is still extremely positive. As Chuck has shown, the very strong Ninos never have an extremely positive March SOI. I guess we’ll see.

I guess you better get your lawnmower ready for the first mow on the 4th of July this year.

The only thing I can remember is reading them from the yahoo home page back then. Who wrote them or anything like that I can’t remember. I would try searching for something like “March 2012 Great Lakes climate change” and see what you can find.

Not to downplay how bad things are out there right now because they are bad but it’s going to end up being a huge anomaly in the end. Didn’t you guys just have a string of good winters the last decade? I know 22-23 was cold in the west for sure. It’s not like some switch was flipped and now this is the “new normal”. When March 2012 happened over here after a warm and snowless winter, I read a couple of articles about how this was going to happen more because of climate change. Well, no surprise to me, nothing even close to that has happened since. Or how about the “permanent” Texas drought I kept reading about in the early 2010s? Next thing you knew it was flooding there.lol.

Ensembles don’t really look all that warm out past day 10 but who knows.

Didn’t it get up to something like 90 degrees or close to it in Traverse City in March 2012? There’s not many guarantees in weather but I can guarantee Traverse City isn’t getting that warm this month.

Meanwhile it’s in the 30s here. Sure sign of Spring.

lol

The west might be in trouble this summer if we see persistent ridging out there.

You obviously can’t expect details on a 270 hour model op run to be exactly correct. I mean you would flip out if someone posted a 270 hour op run showing a snowstorm hitting Milwaukee expecting it to be correct.

Canada looks to stay very cold so the northern part of the country could definitely see some brief extremes both ways but probably no warmth or cold for an extended period of time unless blocking develops.

Yeah. You can see how it’s actually a little too cool in the years where we do get a significant Nino. I think that shows the model is relying more on current subsurface temps as opposed to being able to forecast the conditions that would increase or decrease the chance of that water surfacing months down the road.

The subsurface is obviously very warm and that's of course what the models are seeing. This doesn't always lead to that warmth surfacing though. There's more to it than just a warm or cold subsurface. We've seen early subsurface warmth trick the models before. I think 2017 was one of them years where that happened. Wasn't 2014 another one? The subsurface of course wasn't as warm as this year though. It'll be interesting to watch as the year progresses.

Apparently it doesn’t matter if Canada has a dry, wet, cold or warm winter, as soon as there’s a warm day in the spring the entire country spontaneously combusts every year.

I figured you were talking about next winter to get everyone riled up. lol

Developing Nino could mean cooler and wetter summer here in the midwest. That wouldn't be a bad thing with as dry as it has been.

A strong Nino 3 years after a borderline super Nino during a -PDO regime seems almost unprecedented. I would think a switch to +PDO would have to happen this year if we get a strong Nino.

Wow. I guess even the snowflakes aren’t happy about the month if they were walking out of the liquor store.

It’s the time of year where I just hope it’s active. Those days of sunny and 40s we seem to get a lot of in March around here are boring.