raindancewx

The last two winters were both pretty cold in Nino 4 (DJF). Here are some relatively similar three year periods. Before I was on any of these forums I vaguely remember using 1957-58 and 1985-86 in a blend as an estimate for 2014-15, for the rapid warming of Nino 4 in 2014-15 after two colder Nino 4 years in 2013-14 and 2012-13. DJF 2020-21, 2021-22, 2022-23: 27.32C / 27.85C DJF 1983-84, 1984-85, 1985-86: 27.56C / 27.59C / 28.11C DJF 1955-56, 1956-57, 1957-58: 27.05C / 27.77C / 29.02C DJF 2007-08, 2008-09, 2009-10: 26.97C / 27.48C / 29.41C 1985-86 (x2), 1957-58 (x2), 2009-10 is a pretty interesting blend to say the least. Nino 4 in the blend: 27.24C / 27.64C / 28.73C as the estimate for 2022-23. Personally expecting hermaphrodite ENSO conditions in the July-June year. I don't mean Neutral - I think we'll switch phases in the year, rather than simply moving half a step from Neutral in Summer to El Nino or La Nina in winter.

We've had many days this Spring in New Mexico with dew points in the -10 to -20 range. Suspect that's part of why the Spring has been particularly tornadic to date. Can't be typical to infuse dry lines with air quite that dry. I don't remember seeing dew points this low in the 10 years I've been out here.

I like dry air, but these -10 to -20 dew points (F) with constant fierce wind this April are really getting on my nerves, especially after an excellent March for snow. Any real weather down here in Spring ends up killing a lot of people anyway via the blizzard and tornado outbreaks that follow downwind too.

WPO went positive in March after a long-stretch of the negative phase. 1956, 1981, 1985 are the only -ENSO years with -WPO in Jan-Feb and then +WPO in March.

Solar activity has increased quite a bit in recent months. I annualize it to July-June. Since July, the average over 40 sunspots/month. March was over 75 sunspots for the month. If we finish at 55 sunspots for July-June, it's the first year I would consider to be "not" low-solar since 2015-16, when there were 55. Since the 1700s, annualized mean is 85 sunspots/year via SILSO, but when I run statistical tests, blocking and other features are more likely to show up below 55 sunspots annually. Albuquerque had 3.7 inches of snow in March. Historically, three inches of snow, or more, in March is a ~30% occurrence in high-solar and a ~3% occurrence in low-solar (<55 sunspots annualized). So I'm inclined to think we will finish over 55 for the year. For what it's worth, the Euro thinks a third-year La Nina is horse-shit. It's probably due to be right again at some point?

Coldest February-March here by average temperature since 1998.

We've had some Modoki La Nina looks in winter as of late, but it's been a fairly rare look in the Summer. Will be curious to see if we can retain the warmth by Peru and keep the cold to the West. Summer 1986/1998/2008/2011 is kind of the right idea for what I expect for Summer SSTs. Not a super common look in the past 40 years.

Some early criteria to look at for winter 2022-23: - High Solar - Following Two La Nina winters in a row (<26.0C in Nino 3.4 in DJF), although I did fudge this a bit to include 1997, 2013. 1951, 1956, 1968, 1972, 1997, 2000, 2001, 2012, 2013 If you split the group into +ENSO and -ENSO following two La Ninas, you get one of two options. The El Ninos - Cold ENSOs - Year-to-date locally (i.e. ~1/4 of the year), several of these years are near perfect matches to observed temperatures: 1951, 1956, 1968, 1972, 1997, 2000, 2001, 2012, 2013 ABQ Average Temperature 1/1-3/28. 40 2007-03-28 41.3 0 - 2001-03-28 41.3 0 - 1945-03-28 41.3 0 43 1998-03-28 41.2 0 44 2002-03-28 41.0 0 45 1992-03-28 40.9 0 - 1974-03-28 40.9 0 - 1938-03-28 40.9 0 48 2022-03-28 40.8 1 - 2013-03-28 40.8 0 - 2008-03-28 40.8 0 - 1941-03-28 40.8 0 52 1982-03-28 40.7 0 - 1951-03-28 40.7 0 - 1940-03-28 40.7 0 55 1979-03-28 40.6 0 56 1990-03-28 40.5 0 - 1965-03-28 40.5 0 - 1961-03-28 40.5 0 59 1935-03-28 40.4 0 60 1947-03-28 40.3 0

Elevation isn't inherently a snow indicator. Santa Fe is 7,000+ feet and averages the same amount of snow as Philadelphia, roughly 23". Meanwhile, Flagstaff is about the same elevation and gets 100 inches annually.

My snowfall map has verified quite well where I am. Looks like we've topped 10 inches of snow in Albuquerque for the second year in a row. Above average both years. First time that's happened in back to back La Nina winters since 1973-74 to 1974-75. Edit: The 3.1" snow was the storm total, not today's total at the airport. Only 9.4" for Oct-Mar 2021-22, but 3.7" in March - most since 2005 here. Most of the metro got 1-5 inches of snow overnight. Big heavy wet snowflakes. We've had rain too this month, so the ground and plant life is quite happy.

When I did my forecast for winter, the idea was the first part of the winter would be like 2017-18 - hot, kind of horribly dry, before turning much colder and wetter like 1974-75. This has been the coldest Feb-Mar here in like 25 years last I checked. It's not "wet", but if that storm next week verifies we may pull out an average to slightly wet March in the city. Feb-Mar has been very good for the mountains. It's a minor miracle the high terrain by the Rio Grande headwaters is above average for snow pack given how awful December was. High solar has returned for the first time in years, and I suspect is helping already. In some spots I've tested, the correlations are about double what this map implies during March.

Wouldn't be March without pseudo-blizzard conditions in New Mexico. Should send that George guy out here. Shame so many die from our snow in Spring via the severe weather.

Most interesting part of this event for me is how cold it has been out here in both February & March. That was in the 1974-75 analog, and it's verified quite well locally. Current Feb-Mar is running coldest in town since 1998. Been a very good period for the high terrain feeding the Rio Grande. As is always the case, the cold potent storms in March-May down here end up producing substantial severe weather.

I mentioned in my outlook that all analogs had "fluky snow events in the South", particularly around I-40 west of the Appalachians. That aged pretty well. Snow is not done in the West - some major snows even down to the high terrain of southern New Mexico. But this map should mostly hold. I'll score 100 or so cities nationally when snow totals are final in May. A lot of the Mid-South showed up as at least average in my raw analogs, so was pleased to some good snows down there even though I went more conservative. Some of the raw percentages were +20% in KY/TN and other spots.

This past winter was very cold in some of the ENSO regions, just not the regions CPC uses to determine strength. Almost a perfect blend of 2017-18 and 1967-18 though across the four zones. I had mentioned both of those years quite a bit in my outlook. A lot of recent actual weather has looked like a blend of those years too. Dec-Feb Nino 1.2 Nino 3 Nino 3.4 Nino 4 1967-68 22.87C 24.36C 25.77C 27.91C 2017-18 23.31C 24.66C 25.72C 27.92C Blend 23.09C 24.51C 25.75C 27.92C 2021-22 23.04C 24.50C 25.66C 27.85C That Nino 1.2 temperature is second coldest for winter since 1950-51. It's remarkable how little headway it made to the West. That's the main reason I've not been impressed with this event. There are a lot of years where the coldest waters can't get past 150W, and the real powerful La Ninas can shut down the convection in Nino 4. Nino 3 was within 0.2C of 2007-08 for winter, but Nino 3.4 was 0.7C warmer. Last year was much colder in Nino 4, and somewhat colder in Nino 3.4. Those are bigger zones than the Nino 3 and Nino 1.2 combo, and since 2021 started cold, while 2020 did not, I ultimately consider the cool down/strength of 2021-22 less impressive than the prior year. You can see on Tropical Tidbits that there has been rapid warming this month in Nino 1.2 and Nino 3, as the warmth below the surface in February surfaces. We'll see how things go, but there isn't a clear signal for the next winter by rolling forward the objective closest matches for the winter or the past 12 months. My gut is a true Neutral though.

I haven't really looked at Summer yet. The winter featured a pretty -WPO look for the first time in ages, I think that's a pretty big hint for the Summer. There are some strong -WPO tendencies that follow in Summer. Keep in mind, last year hard was record positive. I usually try to look for opposite tendencies to roll forward, 2020 0.69 1.46 1.29 -1.34 0.12 -1.25 -0.54 -0.21 -2.44 -1.18 0.72 0.99 2021 2.45 0.76 2.05 -0.12 0.18 -0.82 -0.44 -1.94 -0.65 1.74 -0.15 0.48 2022 -1.44 -0.39 -99.90 -99.90 -99.90 -99.90 -99.90 -99.90 -99.90 -99.90 -99.90 -99.90 2021-22: -0.45 2020-21: +1.40 The WPO precipitation correlation implies a gigantic high over San Antonio with south Texas strongly correlated to dryness. It broadly matches the temperature correlation too. I'd have to look at the individual months though. The recent Summers to follow net -WPO winters, cold ENSO winter are 1997, 2000, 2011, 2012, 2014. March 1997 saw rapid warming in Nino 1.2 ahead of the big 1997 El Nino like we have now. It's also very much like the actual WPO tendency in 2021-22, with December positive, January very negative, February in between. July of the five years does look like the map below, warm middle, colder east/west thirds in line with the -WPO winter correlation. It's interesting to see that the net -WPO, -ENSO winters of the past 25 years were all followed by warmer ENSO events the following year, since that seems pretty likely for 2022-23 at this point.

The widespread snow storm down here for 3/10-3/11 was signaled in late February with a huge low off Kamchatka. Nothing big since. https://twitter.com/NWSAlbuquerque/status/1501535829264584707/photo/2

Your forecast was pretty good. My research is that the Northeast struggles with widespread snow in high-solar La Ninas (55+ sunspots annualized July-June) and also in lower ACE (<150) hurricane seasons. So I was skeptical of your big snowstorm/snow event idea, even though the frequent/potent Nor'easter idea I thought was pretty good, and it was of course. Lots of pretty powerful systems. I think most of the Northeast is below average still for snow, but I haven't really looked yet, since it's early. I know Boston and Atlantic City at least are above average. My idea for (DJF) winter was for the Northwest to be cold, with the Southeast quite warm, up to +5F locally. Essentially a classic -PDO pattern. I had a chilly dip down the spine of the east side of the Rockies down to about Pueblo which didn't verify. If you take a raw comparison of my analogs, 1961-62, 1974-75 (x2), 2001-02, 2017-18 (x2), 2020-21, I was within 2F of observed temperatures with that blend for 2/3 or more of the continental US, which I consider an OK forecast on my system. If you look on the CPC 6-10 and 8-14 periods, some Marches I've liked since Sept-Oct are still showing up. These include 2001-02 and 1961-62 with severe cold. I had a 60-page forecast in a thread I made in October if want to see, in the weather discussion area of this site. I thought March would be severely cold at times in the Plains and North of the US, with some pretty potent cold shots in the West too, but there were some signals for incredible warmth as well. I do think when Feb-Mar is over, the US will be much snowier than average, like I forecast, in that period. Conceptually I thought something as severe as March 2019 was possible - we'll see though.

Almost had the entire US within 3 degrees of the analog blend. I consider anything over 3F out to be no-skill or worse, since most places see an average of +/-6F variation for a period of three months. The scale is in increments of 0.55C, so I wrote the conversion in Fahrenheit onto the scale. I had something like 2/3 of the US within 2F of actual observed temperatures in the spot.

Getting there wasn't pretty. But the overall cold signal showed up in the Northwest, and the Southeast was up to +5F where I thought it would be. I mentioned a strong cold signal for TX & NM in my forecast for February back in Sept/Oct. Here is how that went. I saw it in part because major cold snaps in TX in February often repeat back to back. Here is how I did seasonally for about 100 cities. You can see a big +3 to +5 area did show up as I expected. Alright then. Back to skiing. I'll check back in a few weeks on this week.

What are you talking about? The trades are weaker than last year, just like the SSTs, or the SOI, etc and I don't consider that year a moderate either. Certainly not in winter. Go look at the thread last winter, people bitched all winter about that event not being coupled because it didn't do what they wanted or expected. The PDO dropped from +1.0 in Nov-Apr 2016-17 to near 0 in that period for 2017-18. That's a lot more impressive than going from -1 to -2 or -1.5 like we will in the transition from 2020-21 to 2021-22, since we were still cooling off the big El Nino mid-decade. Especially since the PDO is already reversing while it continued to trend negative much later in 2017-18. https://oceanview.pfeg.noaa.gov/erddap/tabledap/cciea_OC_PDO.htmlTable?time,PDO SOI: Dec/Jan/Feb 2020-21: +16.8, +15.9, +11.3 Dec/Jan/Feb 2021-22: +13.0, +11.7, ? Almost every weak event will get near 25.5C for a month or two like this event did. You have many years that sustain at 25.0C or colder in moderate events for a month or two. The readings this year are not impressive in any way. You can see the trades indirectly with the SOI too: You can dress it up anyway you like but we're likely to hit 15 or more years without a real moderate La Nina at this point. My threshold is always actual temperatures. We're well over 10 years without a 25.5C or colder La Nina in DJF. For the past 60 years, 26.5C in average in Nino 3.4 I don't use ONI. CPC uses a rolling 30-year average for ONI, so you're just saying "WOW we had slight cooling even though the SSTs are 0.4C warmer than in the 1950s! Let's call it a Moderate by ONI". It's pretty dumb, in 70 years, you'll have events now called weak El Ninos as near La Ninas with their current process. Trades are kind of a dumb way to evaluate this stuff anyway. Look at 1988-89. You going to tell me that was a weak La Nina now? You guys have no consistency with this stuff at all. Pick a method and stick with it. On the SOI, MEI, or by SSTs, that's a much stronger La Nina than this one. but it looks like nothing below. The subsurface peaked way colder in that event, below -2.0, and it has all the other measures to back it up. It sure as hell didn't see this crap in early February.

La Ninas that weaken rapidly at the subsurface in Jan-Feb tend to see these major cold dumps into the Southwest. It was a major premise of my forecast, "arrogance" and all that aside. You can see similar things in 1995-96 and others too if you when to look for it. The subsurface is approaching +0.3 or so now in the 100-180W zone. The signal for the cold snap below was evident from at least four different angles when I did my forecast - rolling forward February 2021 like years, ENSO rapid weakening, objective (absolute value) matches locally on temps/precip for 2021, and I also based a lot of it on rolling forward similar temperature/precip patterns nationally in the Summer. It was a fairly common outcome after record SW Canada / NW US heat waves pre-mid July. I don't know about the rest of the NW, but I think Idaho and states northwest of Idaho at least has a shot to verify the cold NW idea in my outlook. If the cold holds on long enough here in February we'll be near average down here too, which is a good outcome for a La Nina in the Southwest. High locally is ~38 or something 2/2021 month to date. Average is 50 ish for early February. I still don't consider this event to be a Moderate. Even on the Jan Null standard most of you guys like with three three-month periods for ONI at/under -1.0, I don't think we'll get there since Nino 3.4 is nearing 26.0C already on the weeklies. It's really quite similar to 2017-18, which I don't think many see a Moderate event. I would say, frankly, that 2017-18 looks healthier in a strictly visual sense with some purples making it quite far on the journey to Jakarta.

Subsurface data finished at -0.2 for January 2022. If you like the subsurface as the pattern indicator in real time, currently much weaker event than last year in the 100-180W zone, when the subsurface was -1.0 or so. The subsurface actually moved a tiny bit above average (warm) in the most recently weekly update from CPC. https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ocean/index/heat_content_index.txt Sunspot data has been interesting. Up to over 40 sunspots/month since July. Still trending up pretty rapidly. My winter forecast assumed there would be some kind of major cold dump into New Mexico / Texas in February. It's a bit early, but we could have a high of 28F or something - that's very cold. After today, the first week of February looks very cold with highs in the 20s, 30s, and 40s, when average is about 50. Some of our mountains will get 20 inches of snow or more with the coming system. I did flag it in mid-January using the massive Rex Block by Kamchatka, but no one cares. Even mentioned it would be a cold system. The joke is the "benchmark" for the NE has a translation spot in the North Pacific at 17-21 days out, and so the big system for New England was there a few days before the setup below.

By the American definition, this isn't really a La Nina at the moment. All the cold is 120W and east. Still pretty consistent with my "Nino 3" La Nina winter idea really. Have to see if the cold by Nino 3 spreads west again or just thins like the western areas. Last year the cold pushed all the way to 160-165E.

Ta Da. (For what it's worth, the big Nor'easter forecast showed up in the Bering Sea too in early January, not that anyone looks at that stuff).