snowman19

It sure was. We have been stuck with that forcing for years now and it looks to continue

And there is nothing to indicate that the record WPAC marine heatwave or the very strong, overwhelming MJO 4-6 forcing is going anywhere anytime soon

If you look at all of the good La Niña and cold-neutral/Nada winters (95-96, 10-11, 13-14, 17-18) the common theme with all of them is the east-based forcing with the Hadley cell shifted east like you’re showing. Not a coincidence and you can clearly see the reason for it

Wrong. 10-11 absolutely started out east-based and moved west in late January

Possibly, but the issue is, this is not being shown on any model as an east-based La Niña (i.e.: 95-96, 10-11, 17-18) those years were true east-based Niña events or started out as true east-based Niña events. 13-14 was cold-neutral/Nada, with a cold region 1+2, so “east-based cold Nada”, if you want to call it that? At no time were the models depicting this one an east-based event and they’re still not. Maybe @GaWx can chime in here?

Unfortunately I can’t find that article but I’ll look again a bit later, if I find it I’ll post it. The problem Bluewave is mentioning is in regard to where the very warm waters are and have been for years now in the WPAC. They are allowing the MJO 4-5-6 waves to really amplify in those phases over the super warm waters. The forcing is so strong and overwhelming there that even the very warm ENSO region 4 last winter made no difference, the waters west of there were even warmer. When you have SSTs that are anomalously that warm, it alters the global heat budget. The atmosphere is always going to put the strongest convection/forcing where the warmest waters are, it’s akin to a magnet for convection, which is why we have been stuck in MJO 4-6. It completely trumped the +ENSO signal last winter, as did the very strong -PDO in the North Pacific

I’m looking for the study right now, hopefully I can find it. It’s a few years old, but it found that there is no difference in the atmospheric response between cold-neutral/cold-La Nada and weak La Niña. Same story with warm-neutral and weak El Niño

Not sure we see an active STJ due to the PMM being strongly negative. -PMM corresponds to a weak STJ. The reason why the 95-96 Niña had the very atypical -ENSO strong STJ, besides the +PDO, was the fact that it also featured a +PMM

I believe that was 2006 too. I wasn’t a member yet but I do remember there being the massive New Foundland warm pool and the strong -PDO like Chuck said. There was quite a few winter forecasts that were for a very cold and snowy east coast winter (JB being one….surprise surprise) and they all busted horribly

Only a complete fool (or someone that follows Joe Bastardi) would be expecting a 95-96 or 10-11 redux since absolutely nothing even remotely supports that. Same story with 13-14, 14-15, 17-18….

The new run Bluewave posted is clearly showing a central-based, region 3.4 event. Further, the Euro has had a very strong warm bias in its ENSO forecasts for quite awhile now. @GaWx research showed this

Verbatim, the new run is also showing a central-based La Niña now and a continued blazing AMO

Classic La Niña longwave pattern and forcing. It looks like a decent upwelling Kelvin wave with the subsurface drop and I suspect with the EWB/enhanced trades the surface drops rather substantially by the end of this month and we see a large SOI spike

Look at the actual VP anomalies in the map @bluewave just posted, the forcing is in the exact same area it’s been in for years and if anything, it’s gotten even stronger over the last month. Classic La Niña VP/forcing. Nothing has changed. The MJO Wheeler plots are very noisy and very often inaccurate and do not represent what is actually going on with the forcing

Until we have a legit wholesale, major shift in the Pacific, I don’t see anything drastically changing, it’s been semipermanent, stagnant status quo for awhile now, regardless of the ENSO events, they have made no difference. The background state has not changed at all. We saw a very good illustration of that last winter. The background state has to change big time and until that happens, it’s just more of the same. Same story with the Atlantic (++AMO)

ENSO 4 was very warm last winter and the Niña like forcing stayed the same in MJO 4-5-6. Nothing has changed in that respect, the main tropical convective forcing has been the same for years now regardless of La Niña or El Niño

Looking like it may be a rather healthy +QBO event coming up

This is going to be quite the EWB

I was skeptical of the RONI last year, but once I researched it more and looked at the atmospheric response to last winter’s Nino, I’m a believer. Something obviously changed big time (AGW/warm oceans) and we need to change our metrics with it. @40/70 Benchmark ended up being correct about that part of it @GaWx

@bluewave Out of curiosity, what was the time frame for the last major Mid-Atlantic/Northeast drought period? I know it ended in the spring of 2002, but when did it start?

It’s a miracle that we haven’t had a major, full fledged mid-Atlantic to northeast drought since 2002. The fact that it’s been over 22 years since the last one is pretty astounding in itself. I guess you can say “we’re due”

The theme since last year has been a late developing ENSO event. Given what we are seeing right now, I still expect a rather big uptick in La Niña development this month. Like you said, last year’s El Niño didn’t really “take off” until late July and especially August-September. We have seen later developing Nina’s in the past, so such a scenario definitely has precedence. With such pronounced AGW the last several years, I think the RONI is really the metric we need to use as the adjustment to gauge this event as opposed to the ONI

After the utter debacle, epic fail of this past winter I don’t trust what any of these climate models show for 500mb patterns or temps. And again, as far as whether the Niña is weak or not on the ONI, it’s not going to make a difference on how its actual real long wave pattern effects are with such a very strong La Niña background state

^This. You’re right, even if this Niña turns out weak per ONI (I still think it goes moderate), but regardless, it’s clearly not going to behave like a weak La Niña with this background state. It’s VERY likely to behave like a moderate-strong La Niña

@Gawx @40/70 Benchmark