raindancewx

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).

There it is boys. I want a cookie Chinook.

Almost all major east coast snowstorms are followed by huge, snow-pack destroying warm spells within about two weeks. That gels pretty well with what I expect to happen in February nationally. Have to see how it goes. For my purposes, largest square mile coverage x highest average snow cover is the correct measure for snowstorm magnitude. Cyclically, this storm time frame showed up in October for January at two harmonic / MJO cycles of +45 days. Might show up again in April or even late March as the pattern changes with ENSO/seasonal progression changes. Impulse timing has been fairly similar to 2020-21, even though temperatures are very different, so if you look back, NYC had the big system sometime around 2/1/21 if I remember right. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2021_nor'easter

The subsurface and SOI blends (now looks like it might be +1 or so for January) for Nov-Jan imply a look pretty similar to February 2001 for February 2022 in aggregate. Could change still if the subsurface warms a lot more by 1/31 or if the SOI unexpectedly crashes negative, but it looks very positive through 1/31, with low pressure by Darwin and high pressure by Tahiti uninterrupted. At a +1 January SOI, 1999-00 is your closest SOI match for February. For the subsurface, 2017-18 (one of my main winter analogs) had major weakening from January to February as this year is seeing. The 2011-12 La Nina has been similar for a while now below the surface, and also had a huge weakening in January following a brief, weak resurgence of the cold pool in December. Older years like 1984-85 are in there too though, and quite cold.

Nino 4 is probably going to return to positive (warm) departures in the next month on the weeklies, even with the 30 year sauna base period CPC uses. I don't think we go directly to an El Nino in March, but the fact remains, we're six weeks ahead of the subsurface returning to Neutral v. 2021. It took til 3/10/21. Already there at 1/24/22. This is pretty consistent actually with the rapid warming the Euro plume has shown since the Fall. I was examining this today - most of the US is +5F for 60% of this winter so far when compared to the 60 years ending last winter. The orange zone is generally +7 or more. Memphis had the warmest 60-year departure for the whole country of the 100 or so sites mapped below. I went +3 to +5 for the South, which I thought was pretty warm, but we could blow that away if February is hot in the South after a normal-ish January.

Nice little ice storm for South TX looks like. Reminds me of 2017-18 when it snowed in Brownsville.

I was looking at the monthly SOI readings back to the 1930s earlier today. If we hold on around -7 in January, that's really unusual after very positive readings in Nov-Dec. One of the top years that shows up as a match for February is 2019. Really hope people in Montana don't have to go through that level of bullshit cold again.

In terms of US weather, I'd expect a VEI 5 eruption at this latitude to mainly be important to what it does to Nino 4 and the West Pacific Warm Pool, and maybe the Indian Ocean Dipole. It's probably not a true volcanic winter, but it probably is enough to cool off the ocean in the vicinity of the eruption, in time. On Tropical Tidbits, you can already see a little speck of blue in the area where the eruption was for ocean temperature anomaly change. Those 30C waters by Indonesia getting knocked down a peg by next year would really improve the odds of a cold start to winter for the US in December, since those waters seem to force pseudo MJO five conditions regardless of what the actual RMM index says.

The great "moderate" (not) La Nina of 2021-22 is pretty dead. Almost no actual cold in Nino 3.4 (120-170W) below the surface. Still pretty cold in Nino 3, but that's on death watch too, even though it will take longer to warm up. The tentative SOI matches for Nov-Jan, assuming January remains around -7, are actually pretty interesting for February. Also, on the weekly data, Nino 4 is now running a full degree above last year. It's not really in a La Nina state anymore.

You guys crack me up with the comments. Keep 'em coming! I reckon you guys have 70,000-100,000 posts between you two. Why not actually spend some time enjoying the weather instead of just being snarky? I spent my little three week vacation from the site skiing and snowshoeing every day just about. This is what I was referring to for snow. Year represents the period ending January 16th. So 1962 is July 1961-January 1962. Caribou Snow, July 1-Jan 16 1962: 23.6 1975: 56.2 x2 2002: 30.2 2018: 64.1 2021: 40.0 Blend: 47.8” Actual: 43.0” Boston Snow, July 1-Jan 16 1962: 13.8 1975: 7.0 x2 2002: 6.6 2018: 22.9 x2 2021: 17.5 Blend: 14.0" Actual: 12.2" New York City, July-Jan 16 1962: 7.8 1975: 1.5 x2 2002: 0.5 2018: 17.5 x2 2021: 10.5 Blend: 8.1" Actual: 6.8" Philadelphia, July-Jan 16 1962: 8.6 1975: 1.0 x2 2002: 0.0 2018: 12.7 x2 2021: 6.6 Blend: 6.1" Actual: 4.6" Baltimore, July-Jan 16 1962: 11.4 1975: 2.0 x2 2002: 0.0 2018: 5.2 x2 2021: 1.6 Blend: 3.9” Actual: 3.0" Washington DC, July-Jan 16 1962: 4.2 1975: 2.9 2002: 0.0 2018: 2.7 2021: 0.0 Blend: 2.2" Actual: 12.1" Richmond, July 16-Jan 16 1962: 13.1 1975: 0.0 2002: 7.7 2018: 6.1 2021: 1.0 Blend: 4.9" Actual: 3.0"

Deepest reds start at +7F. Been a warm first half of winter. Well over half the lower-48 is more than +3 or hotter for the first half of winter.

The 7th deepest red is getting near 170W. None of the blues are deeper than the 6th deepest. I've been expecting this event to weaken pretty rapidly in February. Think it will be over in March. SOI is more likely than not to finish January negative as an example of a real-time response to the warmth advancing. The 90-day SOI has dropped below +8 too. Date Tahiti (hPa) Darwin (hPa) Daily Contribution 30 day Av. SOI 90 day Av. SOI 16 Jan 2022 1009.09 1007.55 -14.46 2.47 7.12 15 Jan 2022 1007.03 1007.60 -24.40 3.32 7.51 14 Jan 2022 1008.50 1005.95 -9.70 4.71 8.00 13 Jan 2022 1011.05 1005.35 5.14 5.64 8.43 12 Jan 2022 1013.14 1008.60 -0.32 6.01 8.61 11 Jan 2022 1011.99 1008.45 -5.04 6.46 8.80 10 Jan 2022 1007.84 1008.35 -24.11 7.04 9.02 9 Jan 2022 1007.02 1008.30 -27.74 8.33 9.43 8 Jan 2022 1008.45 1008.65 -22.65 9.56 9.77 7 Jan 2022 1011.09 1008.10 -7.63 10.53 9.97 6 Jan 2022 1012.63 1006.80 5.75 11.13 10.08 5 Jan 2022 1012.95 1006.50 8.67 11.33 10.17 4 Jan 2022 1011.63 1006.30 3.40 11.59 10.23 3 Jan 2022 1011.64 1006.80 1.09 12.00 10.27 2 Jan 2022 1011.96 1007.80 -2.11 12.36 10.40 1 Jan 2022 1013.42 1008.00 3.82 12.84 10.62

The storm this week for the East & South confirms two of the snow ideas in my forecast from October: 1) I wrote "most storms not cold enough for all snow" for the East Coast - kind of obvious, but people forget, 2) All analogs featured fluky snow deep into the South, despite record SE warmth at times, mostly in January. I had mid-Dec to mid-Jan as the timing target for fluky southern snows. Also mentioned significant ice storms were likely just north of the area of warmest anomalies in the Southeast. If you look at January 1962, the temperature profile has resembled early January so far nationally. That's a pretty snowy month in places like Nashville, Memphis, etc, as it looks like this month could be. Memphis had 5.0 inches in January 1962, top ten January for snow in the past 90 years as an example, with 2-4 forecast, on top of 0.5 so far. More generally, my weighted analog blend of 1961-62, 1974-75 (x2), 2001-02, 2017-18 (x2), 2020-21 is within 2-3 inches of observed totals for July 2021-January 14, 2022 so far in Boston, NYC, and Philadelphia, so this is probably going to be one of my better snow forecasts, as I had the West pretty snowy at times too.

The PDO is starting tor revert toward neutral. -2.00 in December is still incredibly low on the Nate Mantua method historically. https://oceanview.pfeg.noaa.gov/erddap/tabledap/cciea_OC_PDO.htmlTable?time,PDO 2020-11-01T00:00:00Z -1.12 2020-12-01T00:00:00Z -0.9 2021-01-01T00:00:00Z -0.16 2021-02-01T00:00:00Z -0.54 2021-03-01T00:00:00Z -1.17 2021-04-01T00:00:00Z -0.91 2021-05-01T00:00:00Z -0.94 2021-06-01T00:00:00Z -1.18 2021-07-01T00:00:00Z -1.87 2021-08-01T00:00:00Z -1.12 2021-09-01T00:00:00Z -1.53 2021-10-01T00:00:00Z -2.55 2021-11-01T00:00:00Z -2.52 2021-12-01T00:00:00Z -2.0