snowman19

@frd Just to add to your post, evidence is certainly mounting for a +NAM this winter, here is the thread Griteater made today:

@bluewave @Allsnow @donsutherland1 Good thread by Griteater, but a VERY bad sign:

Wouldn’t it be totally unprecedented for the +QBO not to continue to downwell into the bottom of the stratosphere? As far as I know, every positive and negative event on record has downwelled into the lower stratosphere

Lol We’re still waiting for the one that was supposed to happen last winter

Agreed. This is what Griteater was afraid of, that we would have a flat Aleutian ridge instead of a poleward one, he expected this to happen

That’s a big difference from pretty much all the other winter outlooks so far....they have February as a massive torch

Here’s the winter outlook from Earthlight (John Homenuk) who used to be really active on these forums: https://www.nymetroweather.com/2020/11/09/nyc-winter-forecast-2020-2021-warmer-less-snowy-than-normal/

Agreed, kind of hard to be worse than last winter....

01-02 wasn’t really ugly looking until the early fall, record high solar flux hit....

No, I’m not loving it. I don’t think it’s funny at all that our climate has warmed this much. AGW is real. It’s honestly sad

This is the ugliest I’ve ever seen going into winter, I don’t think the overall picture at this point in time could possibly be any worse. The SPV picture is particularly disturbing as I just mentioned in the other post

I remember back at this time in 2002 when literally every sign was pointing to an epic winter and it turned out to be just that. This year, everything is pointing to a dud...a huge dud. The strong basin-wide La Niña we have with the coldest anomalies moving westward to region 3.4 instead of region 1+2, coldest ENSO region 4 in over 10 years, +QBO, negative PDO, current negative PNA/RNA regime cooling the SSTs in the GOA and off the western North American coast, massive amounts of wildfire smoke getting pumped into the stratosphere since the summer, record low arctic sea ice, the SPV showing signs of being strong as hell and coupling with the TPV, the North Atlantic SST configuration is absolutely horrible for promoting negative NAO, AGW, torched SSTs along and off the entire east coast, positively feeding back into the SE Ridge and WAR, not a fan of using it, but Eurasian snowcover as of this month is the lowest it’s been in the last 15+ years. Literally the only “plus”, if you want to call it that, is the low solar cycle/solar minimum we are in, but the solar argument has proven itself to be complete snake oil and false hope over the last several winters

If BAMWX is correct, December is in big trouble. The analog set they are expecting all featured a horrific PAC side....flat Aleutian ridge, -PNA, +EPO, +WPO, also favoring +NAO, +AO

Huh? This La Niña is fully coupled with the atmosphere, it’s been very well coupled for over a month. What are you talking about?

There are hints that the stratospheric and tropospheric vortex’s may start coupling come early December, a very bad sign

Think another issue is the massive amount of wildfire smoke that got pumped into the stratosphere, that would also promote +AO

If the CFS is correct, very strong easterlies return across the ENSO regions in mid to late November, this would support another robust round of La Niña strengthening

The CFSV2 is now predicting a historic, “super” La Niña. It shows ENSO region 3.4 dropping down to -2.25C...which would make it the strongest La Niña in history....surpassing 73-74 and 88-89

Right now the SST configuration in the North Atlantic looks awful for -NAO. This is definitely not what you want to see

This would lend support to the BAMWX winter forecast IF it holds, Stadiumwave just pointed this out in the New England forum...the coldest anomalies in the ENSO zones have moved west. Definitely a bad sign:

Agreed, it looks very ugly going into November. It was a concern HM, BAMWX and a few other mets had mentioned a couple of months ago...the massive amount of smoke from the wildfires that got ejected into the stratosphere, the +QBO, the record low arctic sea ice. The SPV looks to strengthen very substantially going into November as well...

Yea, I saw that, it was a good synopsis. I’m just having a problem believing that it’s going to be THAT bad of a winter. IMO, I don’t think it’s likely, but I may be wrong

Just took a look at it, what they are predicting is actually worse than last winter, if that’s even possible. Just wall to wall ugliness...

Not really. They predicted a solidly colder and snowier than normal winter for the east last year. They changed their forecast in mid-December when they saw it was a lost cause

There was a study published years ago that found that a positive QBO becomes a problem for high latitude blocking once it gets over +10 (don’t quote me but I believe that was the threshold given) during the winter months. The stronger the +QBO gets, the more it promotes strong westerlies/zonal flow