raindancewx

I'll go out on a limb and say that I expect a pretty wet period for a lot of the West in January. I believe that's part of the transition out of the current pattern. CFS is pretty wet nationally for the US - something like 2/3 of the country is depicted as wetter (and warmer) than last January currently.

Here is the warm up no one thought was real - definitely verified as a much warmer period.

Look familiar? This is Dec 1962, 1964, 1975, 2010 warmed up two degrees. Core heat Northwest, not Southwest. Core cold Lakes/Mid Atlatnic, not Northern Plains or New England. I just picked the best temp matches in the -PNA, -WPO, -NAO, -ENSO set. These are all warmed up by 2F - still supports my idea since Sep/Oct of cold eventually retrogressing to the West.

By the way - this is the -ENSO (La Nina/near La Nina), -PNA, -WPO, -NAO composite for December since 1950. Its very similar to the pattern this month, but less extreme. The pattern this month has the cold/warm areas in the same place, just need to add at least 4-6F to both the cold (colder) and the warmth (warmer). In the composite, January is still pretty cold. But you do see the cold retrogress hard to the West - in March. February is not coherent - its all over the place. -NAO if it continues becomes a pretty strong cold signal further west later in the winter, particularly Jan 15 and on.

Subsurface decay is way ahead of last year. Doesn't mean we go to El Nino. But the warmth below the western tropical Pacific is advancing east and toward the surface pretty steadily.

This is a look at what the month looks like to date. Had the right idea blending 2013/2024 - Jan 2025/2014 doesn't look too different from month to date, but there are hints of changes by Alaska. I don't think the overall look of the pattern will collapse for a bit. But positioning of the key feature will migrate slowly in January.

December is more or less going how I expected, although more extreme. It never really looked like some consistently super cold pattern. To me it always looked like a pretty cold start and then a much warmer push back. Most of the country may actually finish warm. Locally we've literally never seen temps over 65F from mid-Dec to mid-Jan, so this level of warmth is pretty historic here and definitely more than I expected. The Northwest is actually warmest relative to averages, which is not really consistent with -WPO, -PNA historically. It's just an ugly, unstable and volatile pattern. Record cold all month...oops My big theory theory is very simple: eventually La Nina Climatology kicks in. If you retain the cold in Canada, but add in the ridge over the Southeast in Jan and/or Feb and/or Mar, the cold will dump into the West eventually. Alaska and Western Canada are usually a good source region for us, especially if the La Nina / -PDO are to collapse late toward an El Nino or +PDO. I wouldn't be surprised if it happens a bit later than I initially expected though given how everything has gone to date.

I'm running +7 or +8 month to date here, while Boston is running -7 to -8 month to date...but we've still had more snow than Boston even with less precipitation and a warmer base climate. Really is a pretty weird pattern this month - everything is a bit off from normal flow and progression.

There is an old song that reminds me about winter in the Northeast. Any of you know it?' We met in the springtime when blossoms unfold The pastures were green and the meadows were gold Our love was in flower as summer grew on Her love like the leaves now have withered and gone The roses have faded, there's frost at my door The birds in the morning don't sing anymore The grass in the valley is starting to die And out in the darkness the whippoorwills cry Alone and forsaken by fate and by man Oh Lord, if you hear me, please hold to my hand Oh, please understand Oh, where has she gone to? Oh, where can she be? She may have forsaken some other like me She promised to honor, to love, and obey Each vow was a plaything that she threw away The darkness is falling, the sky has turned gray A hound in the distance is starting to bey I wonder, I wonder what she's thinking of Forsaken, forgotten without any love Alone and forsaken by fate and by man Oh Lord, if you hear me, please hold to my hand Oh, please understand

You guys should be excited. Philadelphia is going to get 3-5 inches of snow before the next few systems come in as rain, and then whatever happens in January-March.

CPC now has the 8-14 day period stormy in the Southwest, which is consistent with the storm timing at the 17-21 day lead I posted a while ago. Also, we have the big warm up coming as expected. If you remember, the Canadian showed the US not very cold for December, despite the big cold wave everyone knew was coming early month. So it looks like the model did a pretty good job. Longer term, the look over NE Asia right about now looks like a big high centered over the Plains and a potent low over the SW US or Northern MX in 17-21 days, roughly in the Dec 29/30 to Jan 2/3 window.

Nov/Feb/Mar

My assumption for winter was 2025-26 as primarily a blend of 2013-14 and 2024-25. The weighting will vary between the two by month, but December now looks pretty warm West (like 2024) and pretty cold East (like 2013). Will be curious on the exact splits, as that's likely the correct weighting going forward and the pattern should weaken and then change by month end. Southwest US warmest Novembers on record tend to follow the same pattern here. For New Mexico the warmth slowly diminishes in intensity after an early-mid Nov heat burst in the valleys (5,000 ft+) to 75F or so, until you eventually arrive at a seasonal or cool month in the late winter-spring transition. Our warmest Novembers here are 2017, 1995, 1949, 2021, 1999, 2020, 1954, 2007, 2012, 1965. 17-18 was never really cold, but it did go from no rain/snow for 96 days and warm, to a wet/cooler period mid-Feb to mid-Mar. Similar for 1995-96, 2021-22, 1999-00, 2020-21. 1949-50 was cold in Dec, same for 1954-55. 07-08 was cold Dec-Jan. 2012-13 was cold Jan-Feb - 1965-66 too. Since we didn't get the cold Dec here, almost all other periods following a super warm Nov are either very cold Jan-Feb, or Feb-Mar...so Feb is the signal.

Assuming my general idea is right: Cold eventually retrogrades to the West, you should see ice storms, blizzards, and tornadoes (probably in that order) in the Southern Plains later in the winter. If you're convinced Chuck is right, you had a several nasty ice storms in 1989-1990, as well as in late 2005 in December. There was a warm up I believe in 2013-14 too, with a pretty nasty ice storm in SE Canada at some point in December - don't really remember when. We did have pretty extensive cold waves at times in Dec 2013 like we're seeing now. But with the even more expansive coverage, you had an almost immediate snap pack to a thaw/warm pattern the following week. This was the height of the Dec 2013 cold snap locally - 2013-12-05 39 19 29.0 -8.8 36 0 0.35 3.5 3 2013-12-06 37 11 24.0 -13.6 41 0 0.00 0.0 2 2013-12-07 33 18 25.5 -11.8 39 0 0.00 0.0 1 2013-12-08 38 18 28.0 -9.1 37 0 0.01 0.5 1 2013-12-09 33 9 21.0 -15.9 44 0 0.00 0.0 0 2013-12-10 34 10 22.0 -14.7 43 0 0.00 0.0 0 2013-12-11 44 13 28.5 -8.0 36 0 0.00 0.0 0 2013-12-12 41 19 30.0 -6.3 35 0 0.00 0.0 0

The support for a warm up late month is this - implies a big storm in the Southwest gets stuck around Dec 21-25 in a Rex Block and floods the East with warmer air in that period. Probably doesn't last long. Then you revert back to canonical -WPO for a while. But, later on, six 6-10 days out, the same maps over NE Asia imply storms get cut off over the NM/AX/MX/TX borderlands either via weak subtropical impulses or lost waves from the Northern jet. If some of those eject east when it is cold, that's a better signal for the East for storms and cold, but that's very late in December, probably Dec 30 into week one of January. The deep blues over southern Kamchatka were last there late Oct to week one of Nov, when we had the three week stormier period in the Southwest from Nov 15-Dec 5 or so as the timing pretty much always works at a 17-21 day lead. Your call or not whether you believe it.

The blend of the cold week this past week and the severe heat in November is pretty close to where the full winter ends up - maybe the green area finishes a touch west. But decent microcosm of what I expect - in theory cold enough for a ton of snow in the NE US, but probably too dry or poorly timed for actual heavy snow.

Another nice little snow event out here. Ski Taos has a two foot base, with Ski Santa Fe at 18". Albuquerque had a dusting to four inches generally. Nice to see after the record warmth in November.

The snow pattern, the 'smiley face', ID/MT to NM/CO to Ozarks to interior New England I mentioned in October is showing up. It's a good pattern, most of the US will get a lot of snow this year, but probably not where 95% of you live. You'll see everything shift south 200-300 miles during the peak cold waves, but it won't stay that far south for periods long enough for major snows to the south of the main smiley face.

Subsurface heat at 100-180W 0-300m down was pretty much unchanged from Oct-Nov. -0.47 in Nov, -0.41 Oct. Vastly smaller reservoir of cold water. We're on our third or fourth advisory level snow event for the high terrain locally. November was actually around 2x normal precipitation for the Northern half of the state, so the +6-8F temps didn't really matter at elevation. Still frigid above 8,000 ft on storm days. 14 inches of snow fell at Taos Powderhorn, 11,000 feet up, since Nov 17. They'll get 6-10 of dry power in all likelihood by Thursday morning. The resorts that get 200+ inches a year look like they're doing OK so far. For those who saw me include 2022-23 in the analog group at low weight - I do think there are some periods through April with extreme precipitation events in the SW, and that wasn't really present in 2024-25 or 2013-14. But they'll be much rarer than in that winter. But the one system in late November was pretty impressive for the moisture content.

Canadian update continues to insist on El Nino conditions developing in February at the surface. Likely by January below the surface. Fairly cold winter nationally. Has the cold look for the North-Central US I've been getting from analogs since Aug/Sept. My blend from Oct - (2013 x4, 2024 x4, 2018, 2022). Hasn't broken yet. I am expecting a pretty widespread warm up after a cold first 10 days or so - we'll see if that pans out.

I was in Japan for two weeks ending yesterday - no rain or storms at all for the entire two week period. Was interesting to see as Tokyo gets 3-4 inches of rain in an average November. Temps in the mid-50s to 70 each day. Even Mt. Fuji (12,000+ peak) didn't have any snow on the peak visually by the time I was going back to Tokyo on the Shinkansen from Hirishoma. December should have some cold but I've never expected a particularly brutal month overall. Part of it should be pretty cold and part of it pretty warm that is why I never emphasized it a month or so ago. Longer term, you see predominantly high pressure showing south of Kamchatka right now. So the storms that were flagged by that late Oct-Nov for the time frame now (lot of lows there, back then) will stop and reverse in about two weeks and the pattern should see a whole sale change for a bit. The CPC 6-10 and 8-14 outlooks show the pattern I expect in the "good parts" of the winter - pretty wet. Widespread cold. But it won't do that each week. I always assumed one part of Nov would be pretty cold in the East and another part much colder in the West, as that's what the blend of 2013 and 2024 implied - you can see that's played out a bit to some extent with a much colder pattern in the SW recently then at the start of the month. But the month will finish pretty warm nationally.

The group of years you picked is pretty terrible for the last full three months. Its completely wrong for the jet stream pattern over Asia for three months, and that determines what will happen for the build up of cold air in the Fall for us in the USA from both Russian and Canadian sources. You can already see the issues with it - because Asia is opposite the correspondence of the 'sin wave' so to speak puts the wrong signature over Greenland. My simple blend had it warm in October, yours is cold. The warmth I had over Northern Canada/Alaska is what will matter for the winter, and I showed it very warm for the period shown. You don't, you have the half degree warm / cold muddled crap that prevents any chance of your outlook getting US temps right later on when cold air is sourced from the North.

The cold wave in the West we've seen this week did show up at this time in 2013 for what its worth. I blend 2013 & 2024 for a reason - its not as cold/widespread as 2013 but definitely not as warm as 2024. The cold has displaced the warmth further east than last year.

From what I can see, no relevance for Dec, Feb, Mar for East Coast temps where it snows / where nor'easters are important. For the alarmists out there you can make the case whatever importance that was there in January is also rapidly diminishing - almost all of the East Coast in the 10+ inch avg snowfall climo zone is now in the borderline irrelevant correlation zone. The deeper blue zone is way south of where it is on the longer term map...

I've never understood the fixation with the PNA for you guys - its completely irrelevant for temps for the parts of the East where snow is heavily dependent on exact temps in big events. Storms and precip and patterns - sure. But who cares if you get storms if you can't determine the temp pattern from it? Its a pattern that matters for the NW and SE US, for temps in winter not the NE and SW US. These maps by the way show r, not r-squared. So anything below the 0.3-0.5 even for a long period of time is inherently unreliable. So I agree on the ENSO --> PNA relationship, but the point still stands - its not a big deal for the East where you guys live for temps in winter. Using Enso to predict PNA state is fine I guess but it just doesn't tell you much in the East in winter and hasn't ever really.