raindancewx

The subsurface looks like it is making another push as of this week. I suspect this is beginning of the final push that should peak 11/15-12/15. Here is an update on the "Don Sutherland curse", where we get 400% of rain for an extended period after he complains it is four degrees above average for a week. Still looks like Scotland here to me. I've been seeing all sorts of tadpoles, chipmunks, coyotes and stray animals in the wake of the wettest monsoon here in close to a decade, and then an extremely wet October as well. Nice to be losing drought conditions for once too. Especially since there are decent wet signals for us locally in the months to come.

I wanted to briefly elaborate on the 1/20-2/20 period. If there is going to be a cold or stormy period in the East, it's likely then. It's ~2 harmonic / MJO cycles from now, and we've just experienced a pretty cold October look for much of the East. My main issue is the harmonic movements we've been seeing lately should start to fall apart as the La Nina collapses in January-April. September was active enough relative to the rest of the hurricane season that there should be both repeating dominant and recessive looks in the winter.

I was travelling through the middle of the country recently and asking people about the driest years on the Mississippi. That's kind of like a "memory" reservoir of recent US weather - snow, heat, rain, etc. A lot of the people told me that the lowest levels for river are years like 1988 - so I do think I'm on the right track with a decent winter out here. https://earthsky.org/earth/mississippi-river-hits-record-low-levels-2022/ I had a bunch of stuff like this in my forecast, but I trimmed it out, since we have virtually no one on here who cares about water trends in the middle of the US. Though the low level of the Mississippi this year is unprecedented in modern history, it’s normal, however, to see lower levels in the mighty river at this time of year, around areas such as Memphis. To be sure, during late summer and early fall, the waters can run low after hot and dry summers. Previously, the low-level record at Memphis was at -10.7 feet on July 10, 1988. Later, two other record lows happened on August 30, 2006, and September 19, 2012.

Interesting seeing the MJO freeze around 6/7 on the RMM method. It's right in the zone where the ~31C water goes to ~28C, like 87F to 80F roughly. My assumption for winter is that the spot will continue to see slow MJO progression through winter. For reference 6/7 is generally favorable for Western US cold if the thunderstorms enhance/get stuck there a lot. October for both US temps/precip has behaved like a pretty canonical MJO phase five month. 6/7 aren't that cold in the West in December - but I do think we'll likely get to 8-1 or start in 5 which are colder. The timing is generally MJO +45 days = same MJO as now. So early December (6/7) warm, then maybe 8/1 later - that would tie in well with my low-ACE idea where mid-Dec to mid-Jan is colder in the SW US in lower ACE years. 6/7 January is pretty cold Utah/Nevada with cold shifting SW to NW 6/7 February is pretty cold West

It looks fairly similar to 2012 if I remember right. I vaguely remember thinking the Fall looked like a progression of 1988/2001/2012 but I haven't looked in a week or so.

Calendar year to date is wettest since 2015 locally. Drought has been reduced massively. Hills look like the Scottish Highlands. Also: Fairly likely to finish October with top ten to near record rains in the city. Non-El nino years with heavy rain August & October.

We have had a nearly perfect, canonical look in October to MJO phase 5. Lovely to see, since phase five is quite cold here in mid-winter, and the MJO cycles every 45-days. Wet NE & SW US? Check. Cold East & Parts of the SW US? Check

The last five winters have actually been quite snowy in the West v. the East, as I've predominantly forecast like you said. Where I am, we had ~95% below average snow in 2017-18, but the five year average is still ~8 inches v. the long-term of ~10 inches. ABQ has only had ~40 inches since 2017-18 - but the long-term average is 10. Keep in mind, elevation in the city varies from 4,900 feet to 6,200 feet. So most of the city has had far more than 40 inches since 2017-18. At my house, I had: 2017-18: 0.1", or less even, we had one brief snow shower at 36 degrees. 2018-19: ~15 inches (~6" in Dec, ~4" in Jan, ~5" in Feb) 2019-20: ~12 inches (~8" in Nov, 3-4" in actual winter, ~0.5" in Apr) 2020-21: ~18 inches (~9" in Oct, ~6" in Feb, 3" in Dec, Jan, Mar) 2021-22: ~10 inches (~6" in Feb, ~4" in Mar) For what it's worth - once the solar cycle peaks I think we'll have 3/5 or 5/6 very snowy eastern winters, with jack shit for ABQ - that's what happened from 1998 to 2005, with a small exception in 2000. There are lots of cycles like this historically where one area of the US does very well repeatedly for snow over a 5-7 year period. As far as me: I was accused once of stealing hundreds of thousands of sensitive files at a job. I didn't do it. But during the investigation, I was given a whole range of psychological tests for emotional stability, personality type, IQ, etc. I'm quite normal. A normal person dislikes intellectual dishonesty - which as I've said is my issue. Repeatedly claiming to be right when you are wrong is quite irritating, and every time I point it out, people in this forum email me directly for doing so. Take it as you will.

Worth noting that the subsurface in the 100-180W zone got to -1.59 last October. But October 2020 was -1.11. We're closer to 2020 right now. https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ocean/index/heat_content_index.txt v. 2021, we have a colder surface / warmer subsurface. I buy into ENSO order as a predictive variable, but not a fan of the "third year La Nina" crap that goes around. I don't see any particular reason why third year La Ninas should be colder than second year. You have plenty of cold second year La Ninas (1974, 1984 nationally, many others more regionally). We're about at that time where everyone and their mother tries to force square pegs into round holes as to why December will finally be the COLDEST EVA in the East. So let's go through the coldest December La Nina / cold ENSO events since 1980. December - Cold East (MJO in Oct) (ACE) (Prior Winter) 1983: Cold East (5-6-Neutral), (17) (El Nino) 1985: Cold Midwest/East (Neutral-6-1) (88) (La Nina) 1995: Cold East (dead/7), (227), (El Nino) 2000: Cold East (2-6), (119), (La Nina) 2005: Cold East (Neutral, 1-5), (245), (El Nino) 2010: Cold East (3-6), (166), (El Nino) 2017: Cold NE US (Neutral, 4-7), (225) (La Nina) December - Cold West (MJO in Oct) (ACE) (Prior Winter) 1984: Cold West (Neutral, 5-8), (84), (La Nina) (2022: Neutral, 5-??) (82??), La Nina) 1988: Cold West / Maine (5-7), (103), (La Nina) (2022: Neutral, 5-??) (82??), La Nina) 1996: Cold N. Plains (Neutral), (166), (La Nina) 1998: Cold NW US (5-6-neutral), (182), (El Nino) 2007: Cold West (Neutral, 8-1), (74), (El Nino) 2008: Cold West & North (Neutral, 3-5), (146), (La Nina) 2011: Cold SW US (6-2), (126), (La Nina) 2016: Cold NW US (5-neutral), (141), (El Nino) 2021: Cold West (5-neutral), (146), (La Nina) Other patterns - 1999: no cold (2-neutral), (177), (La Nina) 2020: Cold FL (5-7), (180), (El Nino) Matches on ACE, MJO Timing, ENSO Order: 3/3: 1984, 1988 2/3: 1985, 2000, 2021 October starts in MJO 5: 1983: Cold East 1984, 1988, 1998, 2016, 2020, 2021: Cold West/or warm all October 2011, 140 ACE, 6-2 in October - by no means perfect, but the MJO is only off one tick.

I included this in my winter outlook. The Euro is much more confident in an early demise to this event than the 2020 event, even though surface conditions have been much colder, like 0.2-0.4C colder, for months now v. 2020. Euro has La Nina conditions at 50/50 for January 2023, while it had 50/50 for La Nina conditions into April 2021 at this point.

Yup. Although some areas that don't get much snow should fluke their way to well above totals this year. Going to be a lot of moisture around this winter. Just need one get setup in those spots, and it's easier with elevation. I mean, some of you must have noticed by now that October looks a bit like 2011 nationally right? I'm not a big fan of that year because it has very different precipitation tendencies to this year - but it has been decent to a strong match almost every month for like 6-8 months now. October 1995/2004 as a blend is also a near opposite to how Oct 2022 looked on the CFS/Canadian, but we'll see soon enough if any of my thoughts are right.

I go more in depth at the link on the volcano. But basically, it probably limited the hurricane season in the Atlantic. That's usually a +NAO signal. The quiet August in the Atlantic is almost always a +WPO/+AO look in December. The famous exception is 1983 I think. The enhanced wetness globally, with floods everywhere from Pakistan to Death Valley are consistent with the volcano dumping enormous amounts of water vapor into the sky. Where can the Earth handle all that moisture falling out without causing too much damage? My guess is the subtropics - i.e. the deserts. But we'll see. We're already very close to pulling out a wet year here, which is vanishingly rare in a La Nina here. But of course it did happen in 1984...after a volcano.

I'm actually fairly bullish on this region for snow this winter - but I still have you guys pretty warm. I put out my forecast for anyone curious. I think the elevation could really help in Nov and Mar when some relatively powerful/cold systems come through as snow producers. https://www.scribd.com/document/599203054/2022-23-Winter-Outlook

I've been encouraged to make a Youtube video of my forecast on Twitter. Before I do that, is there anything anyone would like elaboration or clarification on? I tried to be much more brief with more pictures this year.

Not a bad call on my end from June - I'm sure everyone else expected near record early October rains in the Southwest in a La Nina right? Especially with a lot more coming still? I've been very busy lately, but I did upload my winter forecast today if anyone is curious. https://t.co/2IM4n7Vt5J

https://www.scribd.com/document/599203054/2022-23-Winter-Outlook Some notes: - Low ACE in August in the Atlantic for 1950-2021 is meaningfully correlated to +AO, and +WPO conditions in December. This "look" is relatively common in El Nino, but it looks like you'd expect in cold-ENSO years too. - ACE in the Atlantic is behaving similarly to the 1988 hurricane season. Both very inactive through August, blew up to 75 ACE or so in September. Then a Julia like hurricane in mid-October 1988. - Strong signals locally in the West for an active/stormy March - probably not that cold though. Wet storms getting stuck over the Southwest like in October - this should show up again several times. - Low ACE is strongly correlated to more "cold" and "very cold" highs in Albuquerque during La Nina. - Much wetter winter than last year. I didn't see a signal for huge snow anywhere - I had the coldest areas looking dry, and the wettest areas looking warm. I do think the Midwest will do well for snow in the off-season - November & March. Any big systems for the NE US are likely late January-late February - just a guess though. - For NE US snows, look at October 2011 - we're not that far off from that look right now. MJO timing / Indonesian warmth still look wrong to me for major eastern US cold in December, although it may try late month at the very end. More at the link

It's no meltdown. You literally said you were fairly confident in a warm Neutral as late as 6/16. It's wonderful that you finally realized that conditions colder than last year for almost half a year weren't going to result in an El Nino I guess. 2021 25.55 25.75 26.48 27.10 27.47 27.45 26.90 26.32 26.17 25.77 25.76 25.54 2022 25.59 25.85 26.30 26.70 26.81 26.97 26.59 25.89 -99.99 -99.99 -99.99 -99.99 I've yet to see anything of value from you my entire time here. I sure as hell don't read your blog.

As promised.

Some quick thoughts: - The 1988 hurricane season in the Atlantic, after a slow start, had a cat 4, a cat 5 in September...and then one more cat 4 in October. ACE has been very similar to that year, even though storm paths and sensible weather are quite different. But my point is that that year finished around 100 for the season. My estimate for the season was 50-100, and I was expecting around 80 - but 100 is probably pretty realistic at this point. - Locally, there really aren't many bad "snow" years following over 5.5 inches of rain in Albuquerque, and that holds true in the high terrain spots that average 100-400 inches of snow from what I can see too. It's not really something that changes with ENSO either. The general signal for weaker La Nina snow is much weaker following wet Summers. 1963 is going to finish as the objective best match for Jan-Sept highs and precipitation locally. It's not a bad match for Sep nationally, and it followed a volcanic eruption. Check out 10/1963 and 10/2022 on the CFS. My analogs stay pretty warm in the Fall in Nov, as 1963 does. Will be very interesting to see if that holds, as 1963 is an El Nino. But it's also the "single most extreme" month down here since 1892 - February 1964 is 13.5F below the long-term average high, which I don't buy.

I mean...honest to god this is the stuff that aggravates me. Everyone is wrong, but you claim to be right now matter how perfectly opposite you get things. That's the only thing that consistently pisses me off - the dishonesty of it all. You were dead sure even into May, even June of an El Nino this year weren't you? Even with all of the giant flashing lights showing the opposite? I had January warm last year - but I've never once claimed it was some kind of amazing call, I was dead wrong. It is interesting that no one chimed in to suggest you had original ideas though isn't it? I do genuinely think you're an idiot, but that's not the reason I get angry. I do find it funny when people with 50,000-100,000 posts on a weather forum claim I'm the one who is socially inept. Most of you literally don't have anything better to do than this stuff? Really? Do you just not value face to face interactions or what? It's hard to think of a bigger waste of time than posting here excessively. Whether you're perfect or a moron, the weather does what the weather does. I'm actually getting pretty bored with all of this stuff. Going to delete all of my stuff in a few years once I retire permanently. I realized a few months that even though I'm already in the ~top 5% of wealth by American standards, I could really live like a king in Mexico - so I've been rummaging around that country looking for fun places to live and buy properties for much of the past year. Once I've finished my exploration of the 32 states in a few years, I'll pick five or six spots to buy buildings, and you all can go back to predicting severe cold/snow every winter without a peep from me.

I've decided on a blend of six analogs and three anti-logs for this winter. For the anti-logs, the plan is to use 1995-96 and 2004-05, and one other I'll leave a mystery for now. Both are relatively low solar, high ACE, and they have pretty opposite temp/precip patterns. The anti-logs also fix some of the issues with the analogs. The 1995-96 and 2004-05 structures both favor warmth West / Coolness east by the equator in a relative sense, which is opposite what the models have been showing. They're also very cold off the East Coast, Japan, and Indonesia, all opposite now, and likely opposite for winter. Some high ACE years - a cold / warm ring in the West basically in the same place but sign flipped. Sign flip again in winter? We'll see. But I've got my winter blend.

The last four Februaries have all been near-average to cold here. A lot of the correlations I use have r-squared values over 0.4, and they work when I hindcast in random years in the 1890s-1930s. I actually don't think I have any direct correlations for ABQ in February though. My ACE stuff works much better for mid-Dec to mid-Jan, not that you ever read or remember anything people tell you. I wish you'd come up with an original idea once in a while instead of just copying everyone you follow.

None of the cold-ENSO events in the past decade have been particularly strong in the winter at the surface. We've not had a winter finish 25.50C or colder since 2010-11. Think about that - it's coming up on 12 years. It's been ages since anything has been below 25.0C for DJF - although 2007-08 was close. These are not impressive events by historical standards, something like 50-70% of all La Ninas (<26C in DJF) in the past 100 years have been colder in winter than the recent years. Most of you don't actually look at the temperatures, you look at the anomalies, so it never comes up that 2011-12 and 1995-96 are almost the same by actual temps (~25.75C DJF), because CPC uses warming baselines for newer events. That's why I look at stuff like ACE to distinguish between the La Nina behavior, 1995 is a super-ACE year, and those are all pretty hot in the West and tend to be stormy east. 1995 27.57 27.49 27.75 28.10 27.82 27.59 27.08 26.23 25.88 25.84 25.60 25.65 1996 25.69 25.89 26.67 27.35 27.55 27.29 26.85 26.64 26.27 26.27 26.29 25.95 2011 25.00 25.64 26.36 27.05 27.41 27.35 26.87 26.21 25.92 25.67 25.52 25.54 2012 25.67 26.08 26.67 27.32 27.61 27.75 27.54 27.32 27.10 26.98 26.86 26.34 The long-term baseline is 26.50C in Dec-Feb in Nino 3.4. I know it's been colder relatively in Fall/Spring, but the real impact is getting those waters right at the equator well below the normal ~80 degrees. It doesn't really matter that much if the waters are ~1C below average but still ~80F in the Fall/Spring off-season like we saw this Spring. I personally don't care at all about ENSO strength outside the winter. It's actually not really that relevant in winter either. I mostly look at strength to match on the y/y trends, which have far more predictive power. My ideal for this winter would be for it to be much warmer than last year in Nino 3.4, which favors colder here (warming trend y/y), and then an El Nino next year. That'd be two good winters in a row out here, following a decent run lately, with 2018-19, 2019-20, 2020-21, 2021-22 all seeing pretty good snows locally (I've had accumulating snow at my place every month from October to April in the past four winters, including close to two feet outside Dec-Feb, with ~9.5" in October 2020, ~4.5" in March 2022, ~8.5" in Nov 2019. Nearly snowed September 2020 too, with flurries in April 2020). My research indicates that years during the AMO transition disfavor heavy snows in the Southwest in Dec/Jan, and favor "off-season" snow, so I do think we're getting close to the cold-AMO flip mid-decade to 2030. These fluky off-season snows show up a lot every 60-70 years if you look back through newspaper accounts (lots of very early season / very late SW US / Mexico snow in the 1960s, 1890s, 1830s, 1770s, etc). The peak of it will probably be something like the Mexico blizzard of January 1967.

Last year's event spent over a month below -1.2 in the 100-180W zone, from 0-300m down. Much milder cold looks like a lock at this point. Might already be tailing off or weakening - we'll see next week. There are quite a few events historically that peak Fall rather than around December, before weakening. Each substantial warm up below the surface has corresponded in near-real time to a cold and/or wet/snowy period here, with the super-cold Februaries, cold & wet June this year, and so on. I'd expect a rapid increase below the surface - should it happen in Oct/Nov would correspond to an immediate cold / stormy period in the SW in Nov or Dec. The hurricane season stuff I look at implies a very cold mid-Dec to mid-Jan period locally though - unless it blows it up a lot real soon. September is at maybe ~10 ACE, with month 1/6 over. The 1991-2020 half-way point of the season is 9/12, so any quiet period after the current relative storminess will make it very hard to catch up with average totals.

Subsurface 100-180W for 2022: June: +0.31 July: -0.46 August: -0.96 Last year was almost identical (+0.31 / -0.40 / -0.83) Doubt it will hold though. I've already laid out my position on that volcano like four times. It's an unusual eruption because it was a net exporter of green house gasses, not aerosols. Net aerosol eruptions in the southern hemisphere traditionally enhance N-Hem hurricane activity according to the paper I linked. We've seen the opposite effect, more akin to an N-hem aerosol emitting volcano. I don't have a blend for winter, but the flaws of 1984/2012 as analogs actually cancel out pretty well. Pretty sure I'm going to use those two years in conjunction with at least three others. For temperatures, 2011 was a good match nationally from April to July. But it's been quite terrible now for precipitation for several months - very wet in the Northeast where it has been very dry, and it was very dry in the West, where it has been very wet. The 1984/2012 blend is the simplest combo I can think of that's "OK" for both temps and precip in Summer. I'm pretty tempted to do something like this for the winter. But I'm still testing for now. 1959-60 (x2), 1984-85 (x2), 2012-13 (x2), 2013-14, 2016-17, -2004-05 (x2) That's a pretty wet winter, with severe cold at times, but it wouldn't be concentrated in one region/month. It would move around a lot, especially if the La Nina collapses late. I think you guys in the NE would still be warm in December, but not in February. The map doesn't show it, but I doubled -2004-05 It's ~relatively there for SSTs. Indian Ocean Dipole is right, the Atlantic is warm by the East Coast. La Nina is fairly intense but centered West, and it would collapse quickly late with those years. The current warm spot in the NE Pacific has been weakening too. (For -2004, I do actual ACE - mean ACE = +104, and then mean ACE - 104 to flip it) ACE: 1959-60 (77), 1984-85 (84), 2012-13 (133), 2013 (36), 2016 (141), -2004 (19) = 80 ACE QBO: should be net positive in the blend for winter. ENSO order: should be negative with 2004 flipped (if 2004 followed a +0.5C event, I'd count it as a -0.5C event)