raindancewx

One thing I look at entering the Fall is the overall level of heat south of the United States. When you get warm ups ahead of storms in the Fall/Winter from much deeper heat sources it can really kill the cold shots in terms of the averaging out of the monthly/seasonal temps. From 1961-2024, the tendency for the top Atlantic hurricane seasons is for the West Coast to be pretty warm Jun-Aug. We haven't had that this year. There have been pretty cold periods on the West Coast this summer. We don't appear to be heading to a top ten type season based on the composite. 2005 has a passing similarity but had different placements for the subtropical features. But really 1995/1999 are the only two of the ten super seasons that have any kind of cold Summer pattern at all for the West Coast. The precipitation pattern is fairly similar but much wetter in the Plains and a bit drier in the East. But a lot of these active hurricane seasons have storms hitting the east/gulf to drive up their totals in Jun-Aug, which we haven't had this year. The precip pattern difference looks like 2025 is the active hurricane seasons, but on a spoke centered on FL, with the core of the moisture rotated counterclockwise toward the Plans. To me that implies completely different positioning of the Bermuda High from the hyper active seasons. But we'll see.

May-July has high-level similarities to a 2013/2022 blend. Would be a fairly severe winter, and probably not a La Nina technically, more cold-neutral. It's the pseudo cold AMO/Atlantic May-July look with strong highs by NE Asia. It is dislocated further south on the Pacific side though. CFS has essentially La Nina conditions until Dec, then neutral. For Albuquerque I've always found a strong direct correlation in La Nina in Nov-Feb cold days/cold waves (5F or more below daily mean) and ACE. But it doesn't work in Neutrals. ACE ahead of 2024-25 was 161.6. Cold day projection (ACE correlation image is from my 2022 winter forecast) Cold Days = (-0.1177 x 161.6) + (42.063) = 23 cold days Nov-Feb (daily average 5F or more below avg). So the 2024-25 La Nina strengthened the long-term trend. Observed cold days in 2024-2025 - Nov: 6 Dec: 1 Jan: 17 Feb: 0 Total: 24 Love it or hate it, the math is the math. Right now there is no sign of an imminent huge burst in the Atlantic and we should have borderline La Nina conditions in the Fall. I don't expect the actual winter to be cold here, but I could see Oct 15-Jan 15 running cold, or Feb 15-Apr 15 running cold. Most likely outcome? Three of five months in those two periods cold here from what I can see. In 2022, we had already had a major hurricane by now and finished below 100 ACE for what its worth while 2013 had no hurricanes until September. I can see the late Fall turning pretty cold nationally after a warm start. But it should be centered on the Plains and only bleed out to the West and East.

The lowest ACE La Ninas tend to see severe cold dumps / cold waves into the West in Nov-Feb. For whatever reason the trend doesn't hold in the cold neutrals. The recent average ACE in hurricane seasons immediately before a La Nina winter is something like 160. Canadian doesn't really have a La Nina. Inactive September in La Nina can often precede a severely cold January nationally too if you look. My assumption is this entire setup will show up, shoved south in the winter. Unlikely to be the dominant pattern. But as a recurring minor setup. The setup moved far enough south would be +WPO with a +PNA - that's a pretty wet pattern out here in the Fall/Spring if it is in place during those times. Not as good for winter locally. Parts of the look show similarities to the quite hurricane seasons of 2013 and 2022. September 2013 is wettest on record locally, with Feb-Apr 2023 seeing severe cold for the time. We had a low of 21F here in April 2023, all time record for April here is like 18F. If you push everything south its a good pattern Plains like 2013, if you push it southeast, good pattern west like 2022. The high south of South America would be by Greenland and the big low SE of Australia would move to the Western US with the low over Kamchatka and the high off southeast asia instead of east of Japan. This is the southeast movement solution (Feb 1-Apr 7 2023)

The mismatch thing is just an excuse to say even though all periods should be warm, some will still be cold because the mechanisms driving the warmth are actually only moderately strong correlation rather than direct cause. It's a bit like people predicting the stock market who always forecast record highs and growth because you get geometric real returns of 7-8% over long periods, even though some years still finish with negative annual returns. If it was winter right now, the cold Tropical Atlantic, relatively warm Nino 1.2 v. cool Nino 4 would imply a neutral AMO and a Modoki la Nina with the -PDO. You'd see huge dumps of cold alternating between the Plains and West. The precipitation pattern on the Canadian at the equator in winter looks most similar to MJO five for the winter, with four somewhat close too. I generally use SST indicators as a guideline for predicting the major indices in winter. You can see huge areas of the Atlantic and Pacific predict WPO behavior in winter in the Summer - and favor the +WPO which also favors Western cold in both Fall (Oct-Nov) and Feb-Apr. WPO also tends to 'bully' the NAO primary phase into place to some extent.

2022/2025 had similar monsoon patterns in old Mexico with giant fetches of moisture running up into the Southwest. We've actually been quite wet since late April. 2mm x 30 = 60 mm above average, that's over 2 inches wetter than average for much of Mexico, in the wet season. A lot of decent snowfall years for the West seem to follow these wetter Junes in Mexico. June 2025 looks like the opposite of the Junes preceding the five best snow years in Philadelphia since 1985. I don't see super favorable outcomes for subtropical moisture feeding nor'easters this winter but we'll see. Sort of expecting a weird winter here - warm but pretty wet. Canadian shows a -PDO neutral those can be pretty good or terrible here - but they're often highly erratic. Not a PDO thing -

MJO looks like it is 1/2 to 2/3 magnitude of this time of year in 2022, and off by about 8-12 days for timing. So it's not perfect. It's not like the years have been super different and just snapped into place. Jan 2022 and Jan 2025 both finished super cold, even though the cold entered the US from slightly different origins, and again the timing is off.

The Spring globally had at least a passing resemblance globally to 2022. That's consistent with my idea of a pretty wet Summer in the deserts of North America (MX/SW US). The big highs from Japan due east and off the SE US, with low pressure Aleutians to North Dakota are similar. Southern Hemisphere and Asian Plateau setups are pretty different but those aren't super important for us in the Summer in the US. MJO has a passing similarity for late May in 2022 v. 2025 in terms of the wind anomalies by the tropics at about a 1-2 week difference for timing (green on the images for 15N-15S)

May 2025 has a decent resemblance to a blend of May 2007/2016 so far. Blazing heat north central us, some coolness south central us, and then muted anomalies by the coasts. Monsoon development looks like it is on schedule in old Mexico. Models have had a cooler than normal Summer for the Southwest. On-time monsoon development is consistent with that idea. Cold/Wet July tends to precede snowy December here. We really haven't had a big December in a while locally - since 2015. It is about due. Cool June is a decent indicator for out-of-winter heavy snow events locally, so will be watching that too. My hunch is we get a warm/wet winter, with cool Fall. But we'll see. Very early.

This is an image of the hail storm I was talking about the other day. Pretty amazing demarcation of white v. brown.

We had a pretty impressive highly localized hail storm west of the city today. I had to walk through a parking lot to get to my car. The hail and the melt water were deep enough that the water level was above my ankles and fully flooded my shoes. I tripped on the ice about 40 stairs up on an exposed outdoor staircase and promptly fell to the bottom. But I was able to prevent my head from bashing into the ground with my hands. Less than a mile away, no evidence of hail. The storm was about 4-4:30 pm, and the hail has still not fully melted off the car as I look at it now at 10 past 7 pm. I would guess we had 5-7 inches of accumulation of nickel to quarter sized hail even though temps never dropped below the 50s. Hail is nasty business as the ten cuts on my hands will attest to. I've had to get minor roof repairs four times in the 12 years I've owned my home here from hail damage. The little snow event / rainstorm we had in April was nice after such a long, dry winter and early Spring. As always, severe cold shots/snow events here in mid-late Spring are highly tornadic systems down the road. Monsoon looks like it will be active to me, and the long-term models are hinting at a relatively cool Summer here.

Good to see my analog method still works. I wasn't crazy for thinking the past winter would be like 2013-14. I never showed my forecast here, but the idea was essentially a bunch of years with alternating waves of expansive record warmth, brief record cold, and more concentrated modest cold. So I expected the 2013-14 aspect of the pattern to persist with less consistency and severity but I expected that was the closest analog overall. Locally I forecast three weeks of severe cold and ten weeks of near-record to record warmth which worked pretty well.

The Euro plume last February had the correct idea for the Fall. Same simulation shows an El Nino Fall 2025. We're way way way overdue for a meaningfully wet year out here. I don't think we've had a 12 month period more than 10% above average for precipitation in over a decade. When Nino 1.2 is in the opposite phase of the PDO, the PDO tends to decay toward Nino 1.2, so we've seen ongoing weakening of the -PDO, and that should continue. I don't really consider this event a La Nina. We had atmospheric La Nina conditions for small parts of the winter, but it never sustained from Fall to Spring like in a real event. This winter felt a lot more like a cold Neutral, in terms of where the cold and precipitation went. Cold neutrals tend to be very wet in the South, La Ninas tend to be very dry there. US also tends to have pretty cold winters around the major moves in the PDO cycle (2013-14, 2014-15 after a run of very -years, 1976-77, 1977-78, 1978-79, etc etc)

These -10 to -20 dew points we've been seeing in New Mexico, + the arctic air are a pretty potent combination. I don't think the cold would have penetrated with mid-20s down to New Orleans and Pensacola without both. If anything resembling this level of dry air remains in the West when heat and moisture return from the Gulf in 4-8 weeks, it's going to be stupidly tornadic in the mid-south in the Spring.

Pretty historic south of I-10 snow in the South fits the bill. I'm sure the Don guy will complain the BAMWX only called for two inches in New Orleans in a couple days or something. I liked 2013-14 in the fall for this winter as an imperfect guide to this winter for four reasons - 1) -WPO in Nov/Dec when it was pretty cold at times for a lot of the US like I expected this year. The idea was this year was a bridge pattern to a neutral/positive PDO future, as 2013-14 was. 2) For those of you in the NE, you didn't really have major storms in 2013-14. Just a lot of small events. Philly had 14 days with an inch of snow but only 5 of those 14 days had over 4 inches. Only 3 of 14 were over 6 inches. That's despite 68 inches of snow. 3) My research from prior winters still supported a lot of cold days (5F below average for the day or colder) in ABQ even with ACE getting higher in October. The data implied 22 cold days for Nov-Feb here. We're at 11 cold days in January following 7 total in Nov (6) and Dec (1). We actually may end on the high side of the correlation...although it does look much warmer after this cold snap. I believe we're seeing the coldest Jan 1-20 locally since 2013, and that's with very warm days in the 60s early month. In Dec 2013 we had 8 or so cold days, and I assumed everything would be delayed a month or so v. 2013, and blended in with the other similar years. 4) The US tends to see one pretty cold winter 0-18 months within both the top and bottom of the solar cycle. Think 2009-2010 and 2013-14 or 2014/15 last time. 1995-96 and 2000-01 or 2002-03 before that. More recently 2020-21. You can go further back - 1976-77 and 1981-82, it holds up in nearly all the cycles. The Bering Sea Rule that I use for 17-21 days lead times on the WPO implied a very -WPO look for most of January would fade late month based on NE Asia storm tracks in December. CPC now has the SW US cold in the 6-10 and 8-14 period, with the East & Plains warm. For Feb-Apr that's the pretty canonical +WPO look, particularly since the breakage of the -WPO should accompany wetter conditions for California. Also forecast now. It's not really -PNA dominance, that's coldest NW and dry in the SW US.

This may actually work out pretty well. I was only half kidding when I wrote it.