raindancewx

Despite the reputation of La Nina, it does seem like West Texas and north Texas often do fairly well for snow early on in La Ninas. There were some pretty impressive snow events in 2017-18, 2008-09, and 2005-06 really far into the South just off the top of my head. I think Houston, Austin, Brownsville, San Antonio and New Orleans have all had snow in recent La Ninas. Not each city in each year, but you get brief windows.

Update -

Today is the 60th day in a row without hitting 60 degrees in Albuquerque. Hasn't actually topped 57 in that time frame either. Places that have hit 60: Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Denver, Billings.

CPC has Texas strongly favored to be warm in the long-range after all the rain and snow forecast for the Southwest. I wasn't expecting the Dakotas to see record warm highs in winter, but I did expect Texas to have warm highs.

I really can't remember the last time I've seen a model forecast this much precipitation for Arizona within ~4 days in real time. Most of this is by day break Tuesday.

Most of the moisture for Western New Mexico, Southwest Colorado, Utah, Arizona and Southern California is within four days now. I'd like to think the European has some handle on it by now. For Arizona, this might be the most significant moisture they've seen in a year or more in some spots.

This is what I was looking for when I made the January 2017 comparison. I don't know it if it will verify. But it's possible now, and this would have been hard to imagine a few weeks ago.

We seem to be going into a diet-cola version of January 2017 with all the moisture set to dump into the West. That's assuming the models are right about the moisture. The purples and yellows are multiple inches of liquid equivalent.

Droughts end. Keep your fingers crossed.

I never really answered what you asked above. Our cold in the West is just inversions and moisture less lows with cold center passing through. I've had like six closed lows pass over me since mid-December and it still hasn't rained officially, or snowed officially at the airport here, even as a lot of the state has seen decent moisture overall. Some places seem to have legitimately picked up 0.5" or more with the storm today and yesterday. Early on, December was a terrible match to 2007. But after 12/10 or 12/15 the pattern became similar. You can see a lot of the US is within one color in 2020-21 v. 2007-08, i.e. within two degrees. I had other analogs to warm up the Northeast & West from 2007-08, so we've actually been moving toward my blend. January 2008 is actually very cold late in the South, and it doesn't look too cold this year, so that will move my blend closer to observations since I've been running too warm in the South so far..

Compared to 1951-2010 averages, my guess is January finishes something like this in the four zones: Nino 4: -1.1C Nino 3.4: -0.9C Nino 3: -0.7C Nino 1.2: -0.5C If my assessment is correct, the structure for the La Nina in January is much closer to a lot of the older La Ninas than the recent events. None of the six closest matches to January are in the past 20 years. A blend of January 2012 and 2011 is somewhat close and looks somewhat similar to the blend but colder in the West. Jan Nino 4 Nino34 Nino3 Nino 12 2012 27.30 25.67 25.09 24.38 2011 26.92 25.00 24.40 24.08 Blend 27.11 25.34 24.75 24.23 2021E 27.00 25.55 24.80 23.80

Decent storm today. Still snowing in the northern areas. More possible by the end of the month. Models are kind of going crazy with precipitation by the end of the month in Arizona. Droughts do end - but it will be interesting to see how much or how little we actually see. GFS is left, Euro is right. Will check back later and see if this has any validity. Arizona has had virtually no rain or snow this January. Las Vegas, NM Red River averages 135 inches of snow a year.

There are slightly different impacts for precipitation patterns in ENSO by season long-term. Down here, La Nina is actually a wet signal most places in September. It's then very dry for Oct-May as a signal. La Nina is not really a huge dry signal for Colorado in winter overall. More important early and late. New Mexico does well for precipitation long-term in periods of strong +NAO or strong -NAO, and you guys do better in between. Essentially, Colorado is part of the Northwest in winter, and part of the Southwest in terms of Fall/Spring for storm patterns. That's how I think of it.

The 1931-32 winter was a cold ENSO winter that followed two El Ninos - fairly rare in the last 90 years. So I did look at it when I did my forecast. That year is severely cold in the West though, and so it hasn't been a great match for the US overall. The distribution of cold highs (<=55F) where I am is uncannily similar to 1936-37, I'm curious to see if that continues. I'll put out a Spring Outlook at some point in the next three weeks, but I am struggling with March at the moment. March 1965 and March 2012 are both very good matches to what I think the La Nina will look like in Spring, but one is incredibly cold in March, and one is incredibly hot. The other similar years are in between.

Nino 4 still looks like it will drop below 27.0C. I think we'll see Nino 3.4 and Nino 3 warm soon though. I've been looking at the years where the La Ninas are consistently colder the further West you go in Spring - some crazy years are in there. In other words, anomalies coldest in 4, then 3.4, then 3, then 1.2. Some east based El Ninos are that way, but it is mostly La Ninas. Nino1+2 Nino3 Nino34 Nino4 Week SST SSTA SST SSTA SST SSTA SST SSTA 23DEC2020 22.1-1.1 24.5-0.7 25.7-0.9 27.6-0.8 30DEC2020 22.2-1.3 24.4-0.9 25.4-1.2 27.3-1.1 06JAN2021 23.1-0.8 24.7-0.8 25.5-1.1 27.1-1.2 13JAN2021 24.0-0.3 24.7-0.9 25.4-1.2 27.0-1.3

The 3-km NAM has a pretty good snow storm for New Mexico & Southern Colorado. The West side of Albuquerque did well in the October storm and again in the December storm that missed the airport. According to the 3-km NAM that will happen again from the east wind snow shadow. Most of this is through about 2 pm Tuesday. So the model probably has some sense of what will actually happen. The east wind has trended down for Albuquerque at certain times, so might be good for parts of the city. You can see there is a big area of pinks around Southern Colorado. This is the storm tied to the 10 point SOI drops 1/8 and 1/9 (+10 days), as it arrives late 1/18 into 1/19 down here. Also, the system just about matches the 12/28, +17 to +21 day timing from the Kamchatka system that I mentioned before using the Typhoon Rule - although it is a day late.

The early January warmth in 2021 in your region is something that occurred in 2008 as well. Not guaranteeing Maine gets a lot of snow later on like that year, but given that the pattern nationally is a decent match to January 2008 so far, I wouldn't completely write off a modified 2008 solution. This is Caribou in Jan 2021 (high/low, anomaly): 28.6/17.8 +12.5 for 1/1 to 1/16 This is Caribou in Jan 2008: 27.6/12.2 +9.3 for 1/1 to 1/16

December started off as a terrible match to my main analog, 2007-08, but we've really moved toward it a lot in recent weeks. Not sure how much longer that will hold. But it's definitely a solid match for early January. Main misses are south TX and kind of the OR/CA/NV border area.

PDO update came in my email from Nate Mantua (the JISAO index). January -0.23 February -0.68 March -0.82 April -0.57 May 0.09 June -0.08 July -0.38 August -0.28 September -0.70 October -0.69 November -1.12 December -0.90

The 12-km NAM is trying to lower the winds enough down here for a good snowstorm. Looks pretty good for southern Colorado too.

WPC is pretty optimistic for total precipitation in the Southwest over the next five days. The setup isn't that different from the system around 12/10. But we'll see how it goes. Day 1-3 looks about right to me. Not sure about the day 1-5.

The 6-10 day outlook from CPC yesterday looked pretty warm for Texas. Long-term, a big +SOI December value is a very strong indicator for a warm February in the South, usually including Texas. Although the signal is weaker the further west you get. December 2020 was +16, 5th highest SOI value since 1931. I don't know that winter is over in Texas, but Texas weather is pretty strongly correlated to warmth when the PNA goes in the wrong phase like it is about to.

The cold down here is kind of going as I expected. All of of my analogs had brief periods with intense storms in the Southwest - the problem is those periods are in different months. But they all also had extremely consistent dry periods. Either way favors cold - either cold highs or cold lows. The problem years are those like 2017-18, when you kind of had the subtropical jet over head to prevent extremely low dew points, but no impulses to bring rain or snow for months. The lows were kind of +1, and the highs were +5 generally in that pattern. This winter pattern so far is more like -1 or -2 for lows and 0 or -1 for highs overall. Conceptually, the WPO, EPO, PNA, NAO, and AO all support or at least don't contradict cold in the Southwest in January if you look at their individual temperature correlations. So it has been cold here. The La Nina warm signal is about 2:1 for northern NM/northern AZ, and the dry signal is about 2:1 for northern NM/northern AZ. So it's never that surprising to me when we beat one of the long-term signals. For southern areas of the Southwest, the dry signal is far stronger than that, more like 4:1. What will impress me is if the forecast system(s) in the coming week can actually deliver a lot of moisture again to the Southwest. If that happens, there is a real chance the winter finishes wetter than average in some areas. It's very rare to beat both the warm and the dry signal in a La Nina out here. The Euro keeps trying. The mountainous areas had well above normal snow in the Fall, so I think my idea of 50-90% of normal snowfall for most of New Mexico and most of the Southwest is going to hold up pretty well for the cold season. Albuquerque looked like it could have some epic season for snow in October, but the systems since keep missing the airport, so they've only had 0.5 inches of snow since October. Most of the city is around 8-15 inches compared to the 5.0 or so at the airport. Also wanted to mention: The Jamstec idea of a warmer Nino 1.2/3 in Spring, with Nino 4 still very cold looks realistic to me. If you look at years that match that solution, several of them, 2001, 2008, and 2012, have a passing resemblance to the temperature profile of Jan 1-15 this year.

Spring 2021 on the Jamstec also looks a lot like Spring 2001, 2012, 2014.

The JAMSTEC update has the eastern Nino zones continuing to warm into Summer, before reversing cooler after. No El Nino forms. But you do see this event warm out of a La Nina in the Spring, or even in February on the Jamsetc. The western areas never really warm out of the La Nina though. If the look below for Spring is right, almost think you could pull off a wet Spring in the Southwest with Nino 1.2 that warm. It's not that different from a cooled off 2017 look, where Nino 4 was cooler relatively to the eastern zones. Some pretty big storms that year in the Spring, including a couple blizzards. I think the Jamstec is trying to do something like a Spring 2008/2017 blend.