so_whats_happening

Some rather significant weakening in the VP anomalies around the Maritime coming up on just about every model. This may be a rather brief but exceptional opening of the Atlantic/ Caribbean to tropical activity closing out the month into October. Pretty decent cooling of waters to now just slightly above average around Malaysia (I think that is the country 120E, ~15N). This is also the most impressive the Nina has looked thus far.

Ok now lets just translate this to 3 months from now... lol It still does amaze me we can get better patterns in the off seasons then when winter hits it is like brick wall of nope.

Here is the TAO and CPC update for subsurface. Again interesting to see the differences between TAO and CPC even going from 2N-2S to 5N-5S look. You can see the relaxation in both though through August. The TAO data has less operational buoys in the east (I believe they can turn these on and off remotely, unless they are doing maintenance) so it gives the subsurface depiction a different look from CPC.

Slightly down for the PDO in August numbers. Probably has to do with some weakening/moving of the warm blob around Japan and the eastern portions (NE PAC) virtually neutral. Let see how it goes into the rest of Fall, probably won't go below -2 the rest of the year without a big surprise which seems unlikely unless we get a very solid -WPO pattern set up.

Beautiful radar presentation. Might be able to achieve low end cat 2 status briefly.

I am unsure. I do my best to pay attention to what folks say in here but I unfortunately have a lot going on outside of this to where I can only keep up so much.

It was a rather massive change in SST's that year alot can still happen.

Also besides the tropical system near the Bay of Campeche, which may become a hurricane if it can spend enough time over waters, we should see at least one more tropical system form in the Atlantic within the next week given the relaxation in the positive VP that has plagued us this year. Honestly it probably is a good thing, most folks do not want to deal with intense tropical activity especially since insurance is through the roof in many locations along the Gulf coast. Current forecast and looking at past relaxations of +VP over the Atlantic they match up pretty well to a system being able to get going. Next potential if forecast holds up would be into the end of the month.

2007 is a bit off to me but here is the 500mb pattern for August/September. That year we had a late developing WQBO pattern, rather low solar year, the PDO was rather neutral except a random spike negative around October, subsurface was an ok match, the hurricane season put on quite the show. So it has some similarities maybe an anti 2007 would be better?

I feel like I have seen now a few times 2013-14 get thrown around. Quite interesting to say the least so far it is fairly close in matching this August/September 500mb pattern. Hurricane season ended up 14/2/0, we already had 1 major hurricane so there is that at least. Already had a pretty well established westerly QBO. -PDO was around, we are on a different magnitude of PDO right now but we shall see how it continues. Entering a solar max time period. A bit off on the subsurface look as this year has a bit more of negative subsurface. Again just pointing out some similarities no real drive to make this a forecast. If models are right in signaling and we do indeed actually start to see more troughing occur onto the Pac NW this may be a year to throw into the consensus.

Im not sure yet on the idea the N ATL is playing a role in moving ITCZ north but feel the Mediterranean warming so much is definitely an effect from a north moving cell. What may be causing that northward progression im not too sure and I don't believe many can pin point something so easily just yet. Have those countries on the north end of the Mediterranean seen any type of increase in drought conditions? I know this is hard to tell in a climo like they have but would be interesting to see if that is the case. As you know with most things in this science we don't know the outcome until it has happened several times over and get a better understanding of what caused it.

While Im sure Solar does have some impact you also see a rather large spike around the 2009-11 area this was during a solar min so not always does solar tell the tale so it seems. It may be a contributing factor in helping enhance whatever is going on at the time.

This very much, I was saying something about this a week or so ago that the northern hemisphere even with the -PDO had a fairly Nino like look to it. The NAO domain was in near opposites to last year but everything else almost a near match in the northern hemisphere. The NAO is probably the big reason why the hurricane season has been rather lack luster in the Atlantic for the last month. Big reason why the Atlantic was going nuts with storms in an El Nino was the ability to have a -NAO during August into September and the SST's were rather primed as well. We didn't have many go west of the Islands but the number of storms was there. What is funny enough though is last year was also rather cool in August but our MJO was moving through 7/8/1. This is really starting to further a point of maybe there really is a strong disconnect between tropics and mid latitudes. 1 year won't determine everything of course but it is interesting to see none the less.

Thanks Roger!

I forget where exactly I read about the potential with a warming world to produce a greening Sahara. Maybe it was the exxon 1982 study that got circulated.

DCA _ NYC _ BOS __ ORD _ ATL _ IAH __ DEN _ PHX _ SEA .9 .5 .1 -.2 .4 .8 1.0 1.4 2.5

Yea it is quite hit or miss around here. We play the WAA game with guessing just how strong and quick it happens before we switch. I mean I can see the drastic differences from Allentown to Lancaster to Baltimore and that is about 100mile ish difference in total. You can see the difference back in the day between Allentown and Philly, although I don't live over that way anymore we used to set up right on the edge around King of Prussia while Philly switched and Allentown was getting buried. Even from Lancaster to Baltimore I usually can guess where the rain/snow line typically sets up now and it has retreated in these borderline events further North and West. Cant say with certainty every storm will end up that way but when we see 2-3x Baltimore snows it becomes noticeable much more so when Baltimore only sees a 4" season and we are barely scraping a foot on the year. Definitely makes forecasting hard around here from about Trenton south to DC and west to about Harrisburg.

That is rough to see not a great look for Millersville, unfortunately I know the lead Meteorologist in the weather station and not a big fan to say the least. This fits right into his beliefs.

To be quite honest I just had a conversation about this last night. Quite weird to say the least especially going through a phase 1-2-3 MJO and not getting a single storm to pop in the Atlantic? Yet the EPAC and WPAC tossing out storms. There really does seem to be some strong disconnect happening and it really could be these marine heatwaves bluewave has been mentioning throwing things off. I think I would laugh so hard if this happened because I know seasonal forecasting is extremely tough let alone doing past 5 day forecasts. I like the confidence folks have on here but we really need to know things will not go as planned.

Yea there seems to be a sneaky wave showing up on models that gets into the east/central Caribbean by the end of the weekend into early next week. Seems to be out of that clustering around 30W that models want to try and latch onto. Forward progression seems to be finally slowing down a bit across the MDR instead of things flying by. I feel like many call things far too early with tropical season anymore, not saying it will but this season could easily last into November and December. Meanwhile the WPAC continues the typhoon train. I would not be surprised if we start to see two distinct warm pools one just S and SW of the Aleutians (slowly moving east) and one back toward mainland China and the Koreas. Some of the Sea of Japan (at least eastern portions) may contend with some cooling coming up.

Almost every storm that has come from Africa this year has been flying through the MDR into either the SW Atlantic or Caribbean. Beryl being at such a low latitude going through flow at 20-30mph is impressive even for early in the season.

Unfortunately I can not get an image of 2012 but here is 2016, 2020, and 2024 at this time. Seriously thickness has gone to really low levels this year. Extent is not terrible as seen by bluewaves graphs.

No worries now there is a true test that will come with this. In 2010 Iceland erupted quite explosively in March/April (it tamed down in May I believe) timeframe. This lead to a rather pronounced -NAO period but it was on the tail end of a low solar situation too. All the while that year also exhibiting a fairly decent -PDO pattern as well. Since it is August it looks likely to not have a solid impact on the atmospheric pattern for winter but maybe toward the tail end of winter things could potentially get interesting. It will be fun to monitor to see if indeed this is a fact with high latitude eruptions. I feel I need to state this, it does not mean this winter turns out in that manner but it was rather interesting to see how similar the other factors were going into this year as to 2010/11. The missing buoy data is not presenting the subsurface all too well on TAO right now. 2010 seemed a bit further along than this year currently.

I have to agree with 40/70 here on this one. A volcanic eruption of magnitude is still of importance time of year plays probably the bigger role in how it translates into the cooler season. The reason why tropical volcanic eruptions are more talked about is it happens to really impact radiative properties more so than high latitude. High latitude I believe plays a larger effect in the hemispheric mode in which it occurs how quickly it impacts im sure is up for discussion. Now how volatile this is classified is not known yet so that portion also is to be determined but it managed to reach stratospheric levels (especially with northern latitudes having a lower stratosphere typically). This will be interesting to see if indeed High latitude eruptions do have this type of impact. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2020GL092017

@snowman19 there seems to have been another decent volcanic eruption this one much further north. https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/17/world/earthquake-kamchatsky-tsunami-warning-russia-intl-latam?cid=ios_app