raindancewx

I've been a bit surprised this winter is going to be classified as a borderline Super El Nino. It really doesn't look anything like 1982-83, 1997-98, 2015-16 or even 1972-73 on the SST maps.

If you can imagine the US on a wheel, with the point centered on Kansas, the basic idea for next winter at this point would be to rotate all of the warm/average spots by 90 degrees clockwise, with the warmth thinning out.

Happy late February. Good old dark arts magic...i.e. counting the time between pattern changes. Still think an interesting period, even if it is brief, is coming nationally in March.

Minneapolis has been super warm this winter. If you roll forward their six warmest El Nino winters this is what you get. Pretty much what I imagine for a La Nina Modoki look, even without limiting the roll forward years to La Ninas. Still, that's a much colder winter than 2023-24.

What I've found over the years with La Ninas is that the higher activity is in the Atlantic, the fewer cold waves / moisture / general storminess you get in the Southwest. ACE does tend to favor heavier snow in the NE in La Ninas when high (see: 1995-96, 2005-06, 2010-11, 1933-34, etc). We're actually in pretty good shape now for moisture in a lot of the West. I could see next winter being almost barren of moisture in light of that. I think Elephant Butte Reservoir in NM, which is the subject of countless legal conflicts between CO, NM, TX, and MX may reach it's highest water level in 15-30 years with the run off this year, pending how March goes. For most of the last decade it hasn't even topped 20% of capacity which is the level that allows NM to store its water instead of sending it to TX. We're already well over 25%, with more snow-pack likely to build into at least March. I really think Elephant Butte, shown below has a shot at topping 600-700 thousand acre feet for the first time since 2004, approximately when the PDO flipped to negative. You can see though, the 2020-21 and 2021-22 were like the La Ninas in the 70s here - not particularly wet, but almost all moisture that fell was snow in the mountains and valleys feeding the Rio Grande, rather than rain.

Over the years, I've developed some pretty powerful statistical regressions using data mining / math for local precipitation. For El Nino, a multi-polynomial regression of September average high, November precipitation, and wet Summer days is highly predictive of Dec-Feb precipitation. The output for the three variables this year was 1.78" for Dec-Feb, with the current total at 1.75", and at least more rain or snow event likely in the Feb 20-24 window based on the Bering Sea Rule. The 90% confidence interval is like +/-0.8", so behaviorally, precipitation did what it was "supposed to" in this El Nino using that method. That's the formula for anyone curious (b3 is Sept abq high, c3 is inches precip Nov, d3 is days in July-Sept with >=0.1" rain, with June days counted at half also.) (B3*-0.04239*B3)-(0.30999*B3*C3)-(0.018527*B3*D3)+(0.01853*C3*C3)-(0.2244*C3*D3)+(0.00347*D3*D3)+(7.277*B3)+(28.465*C3)+(1.6066*D3)-(311.76) For March in El Nino, I use annualized July-June annualized sunspots, days with >=0.1" rain in August, and absolute value difference in Sept v. Aug rain. That formula has verified at 92% accurate for +/-0.46" for March. This year it has 0.66", +/-0.46" for ABQ, which is pretty heavily in favor of a wet month locally as I've been saying. This is the formula for March - B/C/D are the three variables I listed respectively. March only averages 0.5" here. When I last ran this formula in the 2019-20 El Nino it had 0.23" forecast for March and we got 0.31". Generally, when this formula verifies with a high precipitation total, it's pretty tornadic for the Plains as only powerful cold systems can bring significant cold rain/snow totals here in the Spring. =(-4.1966*10^-5*B3*B3)+(7.3725*B3*C3*10^-4)-(1.841*B3*D3*10^-3)+(5.3806*10^-4*C3*C3)-(2.254*C3*D3*10^-2)+(0.60322*D3*D3)+(5.1584*B3*10^-3)-(2.377*C3*10^-2)-(0.2767*D3)+(0.2954) I've also found over the years that December highs in the Plains, when blended with sunspots and Aug/Oct rainfall activity is pretty predictive for March locally as well. =((0.0794*B4^2)+(3.8169*10^-3*B4*B5)-(2.7622*10^-4*B4*B6)-(4.522*10^-5*B5^2)+(1.443*10^-4*B5*B6)+(6.434*10^-3*B6^2)-(0.5946*B4)-(1.6259*10^-3*B5)-(0.3421*B6)+(5.22)))) That formula has 1.32" for March, +/-0.65". I use Bismarck, ND for the Dec Plains high. The cool thing is, in 2018-19 and 2019-20, there was also an overlap zone between the two formulas for March, and we finished in it. Basically, my best guess is we'll finish around an inch, about double average for March given 0.66" +/-0.46", and 1.32" +/-0.65" are showing as outcomes in the two relatively independent approaches. The March 1983, 1987, 1992, 1995, 1998, 2020 blend I showed the other day that resembles Dec-Feb US temps also came in at ~0.69". I mention all this because March precip here is most correlated to +PNA conditions, then +WPO conditions. The PNA is shown to drop off shortly, but I'm expecting at least one major bounce back in March.

Hard to imagine next winter being worse for most of you given the temperatures this winter. My current guess would be another early peaking La Nina. Probably another Modoki La Nina. Don't shoot the messenger, but the Modoki La Ninas kind of suck for the East too. I'm actually starting to wonder if the semi-persistence of on the ground weather despite different traffic patterns in the Pacific/Arctic is nature's way of bailing the West out of a multi-decade drought. I would say, overall, this event behaved with some of the tendencies I expected - the subtropical jet was quite strong, but the Gulf of Alaska / Arctic stuff was a bit unusual with the very -PDO / and very +AMO combo. If we get some insane hurricane season this Summer-Fall, I'll go +5 or more for the SW, with EPO/WPO driven above average snow/brief severe cold for the East, like a 2013-14 / 2017-18 blend. Otherwise, a Modoki La Nina favors the NW / Northern Plains for a cold winter. Intuitively that makes sense, as MN and that region has to burn off their +20 non-sense to end up relatively near long-term averages by year end.

I tried to warn you guys in the East about this system. Literally six hours before we had 0.33" liquid fall as snow here, the GFS had something like sprinkles up to 0.03". For now, the GFS has 10 days of +WPO conditions before a reversal. That should translate to about March 1-10 being extremely stormy in the West using the Bering Sea Rule. There was a brief break in low north of the SE Asia subtropical high earlier in February, so I am expecting a brief warm up period locally late month. I've been pleased with the MJO this month in light of my forecast. I expected it to get stuck in 6-7 on the RMM plots based on the precipitation patterns the Canadian Model was showing month after month. You can see that idea has at least some validity for the current period. I had also posted a bunch of snow maps a while ago showing -PDO El Nino seasons. Each of those has a "FUCK YOU" zone for snow that I can't explain centered over the MA/NY border, and that seems likely to continue again this season.

This is the simplest match I could come up with for how Dec-Feb is going to finish. It doesn't look particularly cold for the East in the coming period even if it snows a fair amount. I fudged the scale by 1F since the analogs are old, so it's meant to be -7 to +7. Here is March snow in the El Nino composite for winter above. It's hard to do a composite of these six maps. But the Central Plains at the very least should stay very snowy. Kansas has been getting nuked with snow all season, and these years continue that into March. Something like this? You have to get a little crazy if you're forecasting just one month for snow percentages in the South. But I really do think you'll see some fluke heavy snow again at low elevations around I-40.

Nice little snowstorm here in Albuquerque today. My forecast for the city had only ~8.5" before 3/1, I believe with 5.5" in March. This helps catch us up to the former total. We'll likely be at 5-6 at least. Pretty classic setup for us, it was like 39F at 8 am but dew points were like 14F. We tend to snow at approximately ((Temp * 2) + (Dew Point)) / 3, when moisture moves over dry cold air. That was 92/3, so sure enough it has been about 30F the entire period with the snow. The GFS literally never had a single run with snow here, at any point, over the past 7 days. I'm sure you'll all have some surprises downstream with this system when the better sampling comes in east of the Rockies. The 3 km NAM and HRRR did have some nice banding, with localized amounts of 3-6 near/in the city. I've noticed over the years that these types of snows for us, where moisture moves over cold/dry air tend to have last minute warm noses for you guys at the mid-levels. I'll be curious to see if this turns into a last minute rain / sleet / freezing rain event for someone in the East on the south side of the precip shield. This little system locks in this winter as meaningfully wetter than average here. We'll almost certainly verify on the warm side. But the cold signal and wet signal are each about 70% likely to verify in an El Nino. So it's quite rare for them both to fail simultaneously.

This is how the pattern has looked so far globally for the winter. I'd say I had the right idea - I thought you'd have the +WPO look, with the blues dipping by the West Coast. Not quite the right severity. The upper air pattern is at least somewhat consistent with dueling cold pockets West & South, as there have been moments when the blues have moved directly over the West. Those heights south of Hawaii and by Japan are usually bad for sustained eastern snow/cold I find. My raw analog blend for winter overall was 1951-52 (x3), 1972-73, 1982-83 (x3), 1991-92, 1997-98, 2009-10, -1993-94. This is why I think 500mb stuff is so dumb sometimes. I had the right idea for North America, but it will be a terrible forecast at the ground level - i.e. for snow, temps and precip.

We had some weakening at the surface in January on the Euro plume verification. We're almost done with this event. I assumed a +2.0 peak around Nov or Dec and then +1.5 for Dec-Feb, so we'll see if that holds. I'd guess +1.2 for February or so. The start of the month does look near +2 again, but I think you are going to see a rapid collapse late month that ties in with the move to more interesting weather in real-time.

I'm still not super-bullish on eastern snow even with the repeat of the cold part of the pattern coming up again. But I did have Feb 16-Mar 15 as the snowiest part of the winter for the Northeast as part of my outlook, and I built the snow analogs in August, as they're actually less sensitive to overall patterns. Snow is...fluky. I find it's better to predict fluky stuff with fluky stuff, and not generalizations, like all the upper level map porn for five weeks in the future you see on here. Here is how we've done so far. I've been too cold everywhere, so snow in the West is above average at high elevations but below average at valley levels. The fluky southern snow has more or less shown up. Northern New England and the area by DC doing OK for snow relative to most of the NE has also worked out fine so far. Obviously Kansas has been a dead-on bullseye for the heavy snow winner as my analogs had back in August. I actually think the misses so far - like CA and the northern Plains - are going to catch up a lot for snow over the next six weeks. I actually think there is a half-assed version of the fun part of 1973 coming. I know people like 2010, and for mid-Feb to mid-Apr, I agree it's a decent analog - but I actually think it's not extreme enough. I think an 1983, 1998, 1973 blend is possible for March for snow. There is some tendency for otherwise relatively shitty El Ninos in the West to briefly turn nuts in mid-Feb to mid-Apr. A lot of the strong dying El Ninos go from a strong WPO look, one way or the other where a lot of the North Pacific is flooded with high pressure, to just an open field of low pressure. I think that's the mechanism for the brief period of intense storminess. Something like 75% of all snow to fall in the last century in March here is ~15 years that are high-solar El Ninos. The Feb 2024 map on the Canadian for the Pacific does look similar (in the Pacific) to the March high-solar/stronger El Nino composite. With the Atlantic warmer, I'd generally push the snowy zones on the maps below 100-200 miles northwest for 2024.

Here is a look at how things stand for snow in the Northeast. It's really been rather dreadful, even compared to 1997-98. I vaguely remember going to some kid's pool party in March of 1998 in NJ, must have been in the 80s. I think it was near 90 at some point in late March 1998 by Philly. None of you actually read my outlooks, but I did have a small area from DC to Philly near normal for snow (90-110% of normal), which still seems plausible, with most others meaningfully below average.

Canadian has a major +WPO look for February. Canadian look does resemble the Feb 83 / 98 blend I showed before. It also has the cold finish to winter in old MX I mentioned in my winter outlook. Someone down there may finish -2 or -3 following a chilly December and mild January with a cold February. WPO if nothing else tends to flood Western Canada with warmth when positive in February. As far as March goes - I don't actually think the cold period will align exactly with March 1-31. I'm expecting a flip to pretty intense warmth late month. The recurrence of the pattern that pushed DC as an example to 80F in January should be mid-March. Maybe DC hits 95F on 3/12? I'm half kidding, but I wasn't expecting 80 in January either. Locally, El Ninos that have high solar activity are notorious for producing heavy snow in March. The stronger, high solar El Nino Marches tend to be pretty expansively...chilly? Like not super cold - I think it is one or two major cold waves in a warm wet pattern, which does seem to fit well with how this winter has gone. The more modern thirty year averages are too cold for what they show March doing. I'd expect a lot of the US to be 1-2 below average after a cold start puts down some snow in a lot of the US, and then it is slow to erode with a rapid warm up late month. The lower solar El Nino / weaker El Ninos tend to not have the +WPO signal for whatever reason, and it's more or less impossible to get heavy snow here in March without those deep Kamchatka lows. Weak El Nino / low solar March, El Nino Stronger, high solar. You can see the flow in the NW Pacific is completely different, almost opposite. The pattern last March, when we sort of had weak El Nino conditions, resembles the first image a bit for the North Pacific.

For all the talk of the Nino being weaker, or the forcing being different or whatever, we've basically gone to a 1982-83/1997-98 temp composite so far. February looks similar, which makes me think it's not a fluke. I did warm it up a degree - but other than the Central Plains being colder and the coldest air being over the Ozarks, it's pretty decent. The good news is March continues to look cold and stormy for almost everyone. That's the month I've been most interested in the Fall, none of the other months really looked particularly cold and stormy to me. The fluky Southern snow event around 1/15 should repeat around 3/1 as the most powerful storm of the entire cold season, with ample tornadoes ahead of it as well. All my analogs with the fluky snow in the south had this 45-days later - so I'm fairly confident in that. Here is February and the CFS on 1/29. I'm sure someone will come in and point out all the ways 1997-98 in particular is different, but ultimately the cold air that winter was in Europe/Asia - and that's what we have this year. Cold in Asia often accompanies warm air flooding North America for weeks at a time, with brief breaks in between. The AO was at least technically negative in almost every month from Oct-Apr in 1997-98, and it just wasn't a cold pattern for North America due to overriding factors. March

So here is a look at the winter so far. This is 42 days in (6 of 13 weeks). It's not really cold anywhere, but as I posted recently, I thought parts of the SE and SW might be a tiny bit below average. Now look, I was way too cold nationally for December. Like, horrifically so. If you go back to my posts, I recognized this pretty early in December. But I want you all to look at what Ray had after I show what I had. Look at how specifically wrong I was, and then look at where he was wrong. This is why I say he copies me. It's literally the same fucking errors with a different blend. Whether I do a good job or not, the same spatial patterns in the errors show up every year in his stuff. Seriously, it's almost impossible to be this similarly wrong to what I had in a given month without at least internalizing the ideas. If you had just picked 1997 / 2015 as an analog, it'd be way closer than what I had as an example. This is my blend minus 2023, and then I just went to Ray's site to look at his stuff, and did his blend minus 2023. I still haven't read his forecast I just searched for the word "December" and went down to the actual five words of forecast material. My favorite part is as late as Nov 30 he has a post that says "December appears on track" before missing by ~8 degrees for the entire country. Me - Oct 10 Ray - Nov 11 - https://easternmassweather.blogspot.com/2023/11/winter-23-24-will-be-lesson-in.html It's the same fucking thing....every year. Again, it's nearly impossible to come up with errors as specific and large as what I had without internalizing and copying the idea. The joke is by mid-month it's actually pretty easy to see how things are going to go. If you look at January, its also fairly similar to what I have, but it looks like there are at least meaningful actual differences.

My personal view is you guys will still end up near average for snow. But most of it will come in a 2-4 week period starting in late February that runs through mid-March. You're not particularly close to the favorable part of the pattern yet. I'm expecting March (at times, not the whole month) to resemble something like this, but with the main features shifted Northeast. I suspect you'd get some off mean-track system that would dump 6 inches of snow in that setup.

This is what I had for 2023-24. https://www.scribd.com/document/676713540/2023-24-Winter-Outlook General idea was the country would be warm, but any cool spots would be in the Southwest or Southeast. I put the +/-0 line about half way through the SE and SW US which looks OK given how warm December was, with January running colder.

My analogs had a small, narrow band of unusual heavy snow in the South. So this is nearly perfectly aligned with I had in my outlook from October. Although admittedly the strip is a bit north of where I had it. You'll notice I had the south as snowy after 1/15 in my outlook. This is because I use...counting indicators for the timing of pattern changes. Anyway this stripe has been on the models for 3-4 days now, so I do think it's legit, though the amounts may end up very different still. You certainly have an air mass cold enough to do this. I'm expecting a pretty big warm up late month, maybe not as early as the models have it. Don't really expect February to be as cold as January nationally, not that the month will finish that cold anyway. MJO is going through 4-5-6 at pretty reliable intervals. So it should get there again in February, likely mid-month to prevent any extensive cold snaps. I actually still think DC and Philly will get to near (probably still below) average snow totals, it's just going to be a 2/16-3/15 thing like I had in my outlook. You'll have plenty of very powerful storms in March again this year but the traffic pattern in the Pacific should break pretty meaningfully as the El Nino dies rapidly.

You don't really forecast anything. It's 40,000 words of blather followed by three maps that are dulled to the point that the composite shows +1 or -1 as your extremes, and you forecast 50 inches of snow in Boston every year. I haven't read anything you've written in years, but I'm sure this is still the case.

The AO and NAO are negative and the north is warm for the US, with Russia very cold, similar at times to 1997-98. The AO in particular was probably something like -2 or -3 on the index in January 1998. I don't know what the obsession is with the Arctic when we're in a pattern where clearly other factors are more dominant for our continent. 10 days ago you were all in a circle jerk about how we'd have the greatest SSW in history by now. We're in a pattern where there is plenty of Arctic influence...it's just been in Asia. My point is always that getting the Arctic setup right doesn't even matter in a lot of winters. Knowing that cold air will dump from the North Pole doesn't mean you know it will dump in the US, or for how long if it does.

This is a strange post, and an example of why I said you're all in denial. Isn't that pattern a decent match to the temp profile we've had this month? It's not like it's warming up anytime soon here. We have multiple days with lows in the teens coming and highs in the 30s/40s, with clouds and snow. I was ice skating on the Rio Grande at 2 pm in the afternoon today. It didn't really get above freezing for more than five minutes. Minneapolis has never finished a DJF more than +7 from what I can see, so that +15 for DJF to date is going to regress back to the mean, but not it's like the five weeks of +15 is just going to vanish overnight either. I'm always amused that you guys seem to think I went cold in the Southwest. I thought small pockets of the SE US and SW US could be a bit colder than 1F below long-term averages. I don't think any of you actually read what I write. I always come up with a composite in analogs and then exaggerate the warmth/cold to account for my instincts and observations. Last year I had the West cold, which was right. This year, I have the South generally +1 to -1, with the north warmer. I had MN to New England +3 on the low end, up to +5 if you take the blend of the raw analogs and the one anti-log. That looks fine for most of you given how warm December was, and how January has started.

I do like to use analogs to verify weather. 1951-52 was one of my two main analogs. It's an East look to an El Nino with a -PDO and it had plenty of snow for you in this time frame. See how the southern part of your area got hosed, just like this week?

Who the fuck is tacoman? I don't live on these forums as a dimwitted foot soldier in the army of progressive cripples like you do.