so_whats_happening

Any thoughts to why we still seem to be crashing hard in Phase 7 to COD/weak 8 for MJO? We saw this in 23/24 as well.

Well for starters I feel we are not easily getting rid of the -PDO state we will need to watch how this evolves into the end of summer. Around now through August has been the timeframe we have seen the -PDO dip hard over the last 2-3 years. I do believe if we can maintain where we are now we stand a chance at having a +PDO (weak) spike as we go into winter. As for the ENSO state I have been very leery as far as overall strength of this event but currently it looks like a strong Nino is well supported, super not out of the question but I'm not sold on it yet. The -PDO will fight back on that potential and I personally can't quite place it but something feels a little off for super chances. I could be wrong with that and that is fine, a few tenths of a degree anomaly between strong to super is not going to make the world of difference on the overall effects we see come fall/winter over the Conus. Placement of ENSO forcing is the big one that needs to be watched with the second being to overall strength of the event, if we have further west VP and anomalies compared to past super events this becomes a different outcome for the forcing come winter. I would also like to really see the uptick in tropical activity that tends to take place from El Nino events through much of the Pacific. If the central Pacific tends to have more of the storms this season versus EPAC we are on the path probably to a more Modoki style Nino. The waters off Baja have cooled quite a bit over the last few months this is that kick from the -PDO still in play as well as the cooler waters around Alaska. As Bluewave states over and over, ad infinitum, the warm pool east of Japan is certainly still playing a role in how things progress and even much of the South Pacific is still very warm. In some ways we are starting to see some dual warm regions take place which is fascinating to see. You have competing factors still at play in the subtropics and mid latitudes that certainly will affect the outcome of this event. It still amazes me even with the warming of the central and EPAC tropical waters that MJO just halts at 7 and pushes to COD. Lastly the Atlantic... Are we about to witness a reversal in the AMO? We also don't have the classic Atlantic La Nina taking place yet through the tropics this will also be something to monitor coming up. If folks can make a forecast this far out and know almost close to what will happen come winter good on you but to me there are still many things that show a lot of uncertainty still exists. If I had to guess at an anomaly standpoint for this event we end up fairly similar in threshold to the 23-24 event. Nothing else other than the anomaly threshold.

Just a cesspool like twitter in here, bunch of noise with very little thought. I'll remove April in future updates.

Asterik indicate slight point deduction with late entries. This was the first time it has happened so i'll keep it lenient (I also was late). Going forward I will still send a reminder the day before entry is done and we will go from there. Good luck in June!

No worries we will keep it just a small deduction (barely noticeable), the date snuck up on me as well.

@Stormchaserchuck1 @RodneyS @bkviking @dmillz25 If you would like to participate in the Max temp forecast for the same monthly cities throw a forecast up before Friday 6/5 at 6z. Anyone else who has made a forecast is free to change it up until that time.

I'll update for the June forecast later waiting to see if we have dmillz25 join for the month but so far myself and RJAY will have 1 % deduction for a late forecast.

Finally got a chance to finish the 2025-26 snowfall forecasts. In the orange are the actual season totals, in blue are totals that were forecasted under the actual snowfall that occurred. Everything in white is a forecast that was above actual totals. Red indicates the winner. Error points were done that every 0.1" away from the total was 0.1 of a point. For instance Boston was 62.8" this year, if you had a forecast of 40" that would be 22.8 error points or if you forecasted 80" your error points would be 17.2. NYC and Boston surprised folks the most this year which granted large error points. We will set this up again around November forecast timeframe. I will add Consensus and average for this as well going into the next forecast time (Average will be based on 1991-2020)

February was the only month you had missed. So yes you certainly are giving him a run for only having 4 of the 5 months so far.

We had quite a bit of moving that took place from last month to this. The contest is still very close so continue to do your best. Here are the annual totals up to the end of May scoring for May can be seen on the previous page.

@dmillz25 @Rjay

DCA _ NYC _ BOS _ ORD _ ATL _ IAH _ DEN _ PHX _ SEA +.7 +.6 +.5 +.8 +.5 +.8 +1.2 +1.4 +1.6 100 99 100 98 100 102 100 117 98 10am june 1st Ill update seasonal snowfall tonight at work as well

It has been something I have been watching for a bit. We don't seem to have the preconditioning issues of April through early June we saw over last 15 or so years prior to the switch up. No miraculous comeback by any means but interesting to see the change up. Very similar to 2000-2009 timeframe for April to June.

June Monthly Temperature Anomaly Forecast: 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 month we will also add on Max temps in each of these locations listed above. Please have forecasts in by June 1st @ 6z

Sorry been rather busy and the month snuck up on me. This is for May final tally. Edit: Monthly Recap and scoring Anomalies for the month are in yellow just below that is the monthly scores, I think the biggest surprise was the anomalies around Boston that threw a lot of us off. There were really great forecasts this month. In bold are the highest scores in each category.

That -PDO is looking to make a comeback

This is not my chart it is through PSL and their data. We can go back and forth till our faces turn blue but with it being a multivariate index it just shows the issues of not having everything align within an ENSO state. Take for instance the 22/23 ENSO state, RONI and ONI were -1.3 and -1 at peak respectively but showed the MEI for that ENSO event categorized strong to borderline super Nina. So was it right in depicting that the atmospheric/oceanic pattern was more La Nina than what was being represented by ONI/RONI? I think it is important to look at all aspects and not lock ourselves into one index or train of thought. As we see Bluewave throwing his theories on how things are progressing globally they may be wrong or right but it is still taken into consideration. There will be flaws with every index we have as nothing is concrete but it is more so interesting to see where the index is seeing these issues arise in the different states. We quickly jump on the RONI bandwagon to depict what will happen without knowing the flaws in this index but nitpick others... that just doesn't seem right.

Im sorry but that is just not true, look at 97/98 as the example right on the money. There is a key thing within the variables it is picking up on that is causing it to be lower versus ONI/RONI. This seemed to have switched up around 09/10 season onward. In fact you could even argue it was pretty darn close for the 15/16 super Nino.

ONI coming in at 0.1 and MEI showing -0.6

I would like to see how this actually translates to surface readout coming up.

Here is for the month of May forecasts lot of cooler forecasts considering for where we have been for the last 3 months. I will update snowfall as we get close to the middle of the month, Ill have to go back repost it here at some point. Just as a reminder June will be max temp forecasts for the summer Ill post that as we get closer to the end of the month.

Here is the final scoring for April as well as the current standings Jan-Apr. Bolded are the scores with the highest total for each region, some great scores for this month and a great first month for GaWx. We had some changes in standings for Jan-Apr with Chuck taking a solid uptick even after missing out a month with Donsutherland taking a more commanding lead. Keep up the great work folks!

Here is a recap of forecasts as well as what ended up being the actual anomalies for the month of April.

Sorry there is a gap around the 8th of April TAO never updated for me