so_whats_happening

Not a problem thanks for the forecast. @donsutherland1 @MJO812 we will be starting May forecasts to be due back at May 1st by 6z and each month after for the future. Would love to see everyone still participate but of course life happens. I will do my best to make it as close to what Roger was trying to do for these contests as we go along.

Awesome if you have time to drop a forecast this weekend we will keep late penalties out for this one.

Forecast by 6z 4/3 essentially 3 hours from now. Going forward we will be doing this on 1st of each month by 6z.

@dmillz25 @donsutherland1 @MJO812 @yoda let me know if you would like to still continue doing the monthly temp forecasts.

I did it for April 3rd @6z to get back into the swing of things but come May and onward we will go back to by the 1st at 6z.

Before I forget mine: DCA: +2.4 NYC: +1.9 BOS: +0.8 ORD: +0.8 ATL: +1.5 IAH: +1.7 DEN: +1.3 PHX: +0.9 SEA: +0.4

From January scores done by Roger, February done by wxdude64, and March done by myself (just above) here are the standings as of the end of March. I hope this is all correct and this should become much smoother as we move forward. Bolded are the tops scores in each category. The asterisk is for months that were missed. We have quite the grouping going on and love to see newcomers each month. I will send out a message to folks about April who see missing thus far.

Here is the March update. Denver and Phoenix experienced unprecedented warmth for the month of March and all of us were over +5 away from actual anomalies so it resulted in a score of 0. Until I can figure out how to do Roger's 60 rule for extremely anomalous temperatures we will have to keep these at 0. If you find any of these numbers to be off/wrong or I missed anyone please feel free to reach out. I will add the accumulated score through the end of March in a bit. I left out Consensus and normal for now as the way i calculated it (consensus) is slightly off to how Roger had it back in January/February.

I don't know how anyone is surprised about the lack of data/products.

As much as I and many others would love to see the PDO actually change that ain't looking all to good right now regardless of ENSO state to come. Weak to moderate +ENSO is a solid call still with a tip to strong if it can actually get itself together. Super is a stretch but hey weird things happen. The more time passes the more I see this being situated further west with warming lets see how things shape up over the next month.

For getting back into it with April we can extend it to the 3rd of April 6z but going forward lets try to stick to the 1st of the month at 6z. There will be times where it won't be perfect. I think we will try to add penalties as we go along for late forecasts.

Wonderful! Thank you ill take a look tonight while im at work then. Im tagging all this so that it is easy to see going forward I'll also gather the march items in a few days. I actually kind of like it without the curve but ill let everyone else chime in as it was a tough forecast last month.

Lets do it! April Forecasts below and including scotty's just above. For anyone new wanting to enter, the forecast contest asks you to predict temperature anomalies at nine locations across the U.S., in F deg relative to 1991-2020 averages. The nine locations are DCA _ NYC _ BOS _ ORD _ ATL _ IAH _ DEN _ PHX _ SEA This is from Roger's intial post so I'll just include it for each month going forward. Forecasts in by lets say April 3rd 06z to get back into it. We will figure out scoring as time goes on, I'll play around with it this week. March anomalies will be updated shortly.

Ill look up the Denver one because for some reason it didn't look to be listed from the link.

Just so we are all on the same boat as for locations with February anomalies: DCA: Washington Reagan (-3.8) NYC: Are we using JFK, LGA, or central park data? (-4.7, -4.6, -4.4 respectively) BOS: Logan Airport (-3.3) ORD: O'Hare or Midway? (+4.3, +3.9) ATL: Hartsfield (+3.1) IAH: Houston Bush (+6.1) DEN: Denver is a tricky one with the airport like 5 miles away from downtown but there is a Denver central park site (https://www.weather.gov/wrh/climate?wfo=bou) (+9) PHX: Phoenix Airport (+7.8) SEA: Seattle-Tacoma or Boeing Field? (+0.4, +1.1) Any input/changes are appreciated!

I would be down to keep giving it a try. As for scoring this may take time to figure out but we can at least post the results for each month as well as snowfall and Max temps. I think it would be great to keep it going in honor of Roger.

The strength of the of westerlies will fluctuate over the next week but it is more so the actual motion and presence that are the more important factors, showing things have at least started to change. As of now it looks like the MJO and the westerlies are not in tandem, MJO seems to be front running but if MJO slows or westerlies speed up they will be much more connected which could mean we have finally reached the point where things really start to get going with the Nino event. Time will tell

Here is the February to March 19th (every about 5 days) TAO look. We will be having the WWB take place over 130-140E and progress E. You can see what the last one was able to do back in mid February. Very slow rotation going on but could be one heck of a WWB if this holds. Be mindful the zonal wind anomalies shown are not always what reality equates to but more so movement is the key strength will vary along the way.

We shall see I do wonder that with this being so far north in comparison to the past few super El Nino events, this seems to have a bullseye around roughly 5N. Will we follow similar paths to those events or create a new way we have yet to see (something similar to what Stormchaserchuck showed in earlier pages) and would we actually remove the heat basin? In comparison to the last 4 super Nino events in ~50 years.

Ill wait of course until we actually start to see things evolve the next few weeks but I think I remember Bluewave mentioning awhile back about what would be the threshold needed to overcome such a dipole of west to east Pac. We saw ONI from 2015 reach 3C in the intra timeframes overall 2.8 trimonthly and we were still left with a healthy WPAC warm pool.

We have not been able to flush out the WPAC warmth which at some point has to be redistributed. The last couple El Nino events have not had intense WWB events and this potentially has the chance to uproot at least a good portion of that warmth. This certainly will be interesting to watch going forward. I know we have had many discussions on here about stuck patterns/ new norms but eventually they do break down, I do wonder what such an event would cause. Time to watch and learn. Here is 2015 and well 2023 virtually was non existent for a wind anomaly in both March and April. I do wonder with it being so far north what this could mean. We did not reset the Pacific pattern like we saw with the large push in 1997/98 take a look at subsurface and surface anomalies for an example. So maybe in order to tame/remove this heat engine that has been persistent we start to push the bounds of what we have known. To add the breadth and overall strength of such an event is important as placement.

I see the potential but I just can't shake that this doesn't quite get to those levels. Now that things are starting to shine some light on the potential of at least an El Nino im happy to take my weak stance to a moderate level coming up here for the summer and fall with a chance to strong. Super is a stretch for now but also have to see how things progress past the spring barrier. I know I have shared this countless times in comparison and of course not all Nino's will form the same way but I can't help but notice that this setup is different in approach than the 23-24 season with westerly anomalies not as strong in the eastern Pac. I think this has role in maybe limiting the potential of how strong it can get and potentially placement as well but again plenty of time to watch things unfold. I only have what I have saved so forgive me when they dont show a similar time period. Also notice the lack of a full rotation like we saw in the 2023 example (upper image), maybe this is still to come?

Sorry to tag but felt it was needed for everyone to know in here. @Rjay @donsutherland1 @bkviking @MJO812 @RodneyS @Stormchaserchuck1 @Tom @wxallannj @Scotty Lightning @dmillz25 @hudsonvalley21

Oh no such a shame to hear may he rest in peace.

If this were to actually hold we would see quite the KW form and would significantly raise the chances of at least a moderate to strong Nino.