raindancewx

This is pretty ballsy from the local NWS. I went 2-4", with up to 8" if the snow developed earlier in the day than expected (instead of rain). But it's also pretty windy which tends to limit snow accumulations here. Still in the high 40s after 11 pm too. URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE National Weather Service Albuquerque NM 1102 PM MDT Sun Oct 25 2020 ...ACCUMULATING SNOW AND A WINTRY MIX OF PRECIPITATION TONIGHT THROUGH WEDNESDAY OVER NORTHERN AND CENTRAL NEW MEXICO... .A powerful backdoor cold front and deepening storm to the west will combine to bring snow to northern and central New Mexico through Wednesday. In addition to the snow will be brief periods of sleet and freezing rain across portions of the east central and southeast plains. In addition, record-breaking cold air with wind chills near or below zero will increase hazardous travel conditions. Snow will linger through Wednesday across the east as precipitation wraps-around the storm system. NMZ203-204-206-207-211-216>219-221-261100- /O.CON.KABQ.WS.W.0008.000000T0000Z-201028T1200Z/ Far Northwest Highlands-Northwest Highlands- West Central Mountains-West Central Highlands-Jemez Mountains- Upper Rio Grande Valley-Espanola Valley-Santa Fe Metro Area- Middle Rio Grande Valley/Albuquerque Metro Area- Sandia/Manzano Mountains Including Edgewood- 1102 PM MDT Sun Oct 25 2020 ...WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 AM MDT WEDNESDAY... * WHAT...Heavy snow expected. Total snow accumulations of 4 to 9 inches except for higher amounts along mountain peaks. Winds gusting as high as 40 mph. * WHERE...Far Northwest Highlands, Northwest Highlands, West Central Mountains and West Central Highlands. * WHEN...Until 6 AM MDT Wednesday. * IMPACTS...Travel could be very difficult to impossible. * ADDITIONAL DETAILS...Travel on Interstate 40 from the Bernalillo and Cibola County line to Fort Wingate and other highways over western New Mexico will be impacted. Near record cold temperatures will exacerbate the hazardous travel conditions. For the latest New Mexico road conditions call 511 or visit nmroads.com. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... If you must travel, keep an extra flashlight, food, and water in your vehicle in case of an emergency. The latest road conditions for New Mexico can be obtained by calling 5 1 1, 1-800-432-4269, or visiting nmroads.com.

The October SOI reading in 2007 was about +6. I think we'll be in that area by the end of the month given where are now and how the SOI looks the rest of the month. Nothing like the +20 in October 2010 though. That said, 2007 got a lot more 'connected' after October between the SOI and the SST readings. Date Tahiti (hPa) Darwin (hPa) Daily Contribution 30 day Av. SOI 90 day Av. SOI 25 Oct 2020 1011.65 1009.80 -6.71 6.96 7.51 24 Oct 2020 1012.72 1009.65 1.16 7.74 7.60 23 Oct 2020 1013.92 1009.60 9.22 8.18 7.65 The forecast of a +NAO in at least early November, as well as the recent SOI crash favors at least some storms in New Mexico, unlike the mid-Sept to late-Oct period that went precipitation free. The map favors dryness on the West Coast, and only NM is heavily favored to be wet, so I have to assume cut off lows or the subtropical jet stream are in play here?

I've never seen a situation where a tropical storm on the Atlantic side could feed a NM/TX snow event, but it looks like that could happen on Tuesday/Wednesday. A couple years ago, you did have a dying pacific tropical storm enhance snow in October in CO/NM/TX, but it was a much warmer system than this one is. This was an earlier depiction for late Tuesday. Actually, the whole "-NAO reverts to neutral", and rage of god cold descends into Montana for an extended period, does remind me of late January to February 2019, even though I dislike 2018-19 as an analog for the winter. My winter analog blend had a high of 73 or 74 for Albuquerque in October. The cold in the next week should push Albuquerque from 80 degrees Fahrenheit for the month to date high to about 74 or 75, so should end up being pretty close, even though we got there via record heat and record cold, while I had expected just general (weakly) above average temperatures. There was another huge SOI crash in recent days, so I expect the pattern to stay stormy in November, even if the US is warm overall, at least to about Thanksgiving. I'd expect the -NAO part of the pattern to return later in the month, but we'll see if I'm right about that. The SOI isn't really in line with the "this is a very strong La Nina" look you see in the Pacific right now. The SOI says this is a borderline Neutral/La Nina pattern. That may be temporary, but the next days looked like they'd have pretty -SOI readings too. Date Tahiti (hPa) Darwin (hPa) Daily Contribution 30 day Av. SOI 90 day Av. SOI 25 Oct 2020 1011.65 1009.80 -6.71 6.96 7.51 24 Oct 2020 1012.72 1009.65 1.16 7.74 7.60 23 Oct 2020 1013.92 1009.60 9.22 8.18 7.65 Weather.com is actually more optimistic than the local NWS for snow here too - keep in mind, in 90 years, the record for October snow in Albuquerque is 3.2 inches. Coldest low of October is also highly correlated with total days to see a low <=32F here from Oct-May.

Pretty good system for southern snow pack if it verifies. Chama averages ~100 inches so this would put them well on their way.

This is what I got here using the 12z runs:

What do you make the temperature differences in the models? When I looked last night, the GFS had lows around 18 in Albuquerque, the Euro around 26, and the NAM around 22. Those are huge differences and I find that the "snow shadow" below the canyons here is often overcome when the temperatures are below 25. I'm a little concerned the models have a terrible reading on temperatures though - the local NWS had a low of 39 for this morning and it only fell to 58 with a south wind and clouds overhead. If the high is 78 instead of 73 because of that, it's just a couple more hours until the cold front kills off the heat.

Looks like three days of pretty -SOI readings are likely 10/26 to 10/28. This is the middle of the period - some pretty high pressure by Darwin and pretty low pressure by Tahiti.

The models are kind of a mess down here. Last I looked, the GFS had surface temps reaching ~32F in the city at noon, the Euro at 6 pm, and the 3-km NAM at 6 am - this all Monday. The 3-km NAM is usually pretty good with timing temperature changes here, so hoping the next set of runs are closer. The local NWS already has a winter storm watch out for a lot of New Mexico. I'd expect Albuquerque to go in a Winter Weather Advisory for 1-4" of snow for something like 3 pm Monday to 10 am Tuesday, but we'll see what they do. I'm a little hesitant to buy much more than 3 inches of snow here no matter what the models say, since the 1931-2019 record for October snow is 3.2 inches.

Some La Ninas I don't like and some I do: Dislike: 2010 - the entire North Pacific is cold east of 150W. This year? Not so much. Atlantic is opposite too - cold east this year, warm east in 2010. Even the waters by Greenland are different. The IOD is pretty canonically negative in 2010 too, unlike this year. Nino 4 is also way colder than this year. 2017-18 developed late and was still very weak in October. The Atlantic is much warmer. The warmth west of Australia this year is not there in 2017 at all. So it's close to a positive Indian Ocean Dipole, which we don't really have this Fall. 2005 is kind of similar, developed late, but it was stronger in by South America at this point. Like: 1988 is similar in the Nino zones. Colder North Atlantic/North Pacific, but similar structurally. It followed two El Ninos too. It's a strong La Nina that didn't completely take over the North Pacific. 2007 has the ring of warmth around the strong La Nina look, with the cold eastern Atlantic. It's not perfect, but it's the best match of recent La Ninas (1990-)

Weather.com and Accuweather are showing ~record October snow for Albuquerque Monday-Tuesday. The models are showing upper level features supportive of snow banding, so someone could get 4-8 or 5-10 inches of snow. The record is 3.2 inches in Albuquerque for 1931-2019 in October. Weather.com has 1-3" Monday, 1-3" Monday Night, and then 0-1" Tuesday Night/Wednesday AM. I look at that as 2-7" for the city. Accuweather has about 4 inches. My snow forecast is probably going to bust low here if we actually do get 3,4,5 inches of snow in October. The La Nina Oct-May average is only 6 inches in Albuquerque, but October only averages 0.1 inches of snow long-term, and the median is 0.0", not even Trace.

The local NWS had an interesting discussion today on the snow potential with the coming system. I usually blend the Euro, 3-km NAM and GFS to get precip totals here for Oct-May. But not in range yet for the 3-KM NAM. Precipitation will start in the northern parts of the state through the northern mountains Sunday night into Monday morning. Precipitation then spreads across much of the state during the day Monday as the jet stream increases and large scale QG lift increases. The combination of Q-vector divergence and frontogenesis in 700mb- 600mb layers will allow for banded precipitation across central and northern New Mexico. This analysis was mainly done with the 12Z GFS but looking at the ECMWF/Canadian/ICON models, there was not much difference with the GFS. The ECMWF produced quite a bit more snowfall and the ICON given its resolution produce finer detailed banded structures to the precip. So given the forcing, we really need to be careful Monday night for the possibility of impactful winter banded precip in which snowfall amounts could quickly increase. The lift in these bands could lead to much higher snowfall rates than what is forecast. And these bands are mesoscale in nature so nailing down the exact location and timing will be difficult in the next couple of days. Just realize there could be areas that get only 1-2 inches while not far away areas get 9 inches. For now we are more conservative with snowfall amounts through the end of the day Wednesday but that will be re-evaluated in the coming days. For now some of the higher mountain areas could push 12 inches of snow with anywhere from 2 to 6 inches possible in some of the lower elevations. Even the Rio Grande Valley could see 2 to 4 inches of snow during this time. The good thing is that much of the state will see very beneficial precipitation.

This is what I had for snow nationally in my winter forecast. I went with 2007 as the main analog - it's a pretty strong La Nina, has low solar, with slow cooling in Nino 4, following an El Nino, and it has low sea ice like this year. Atlantic looks fairly similar. The other years are in there to "fix it" in terms of some of the issues I had with it. 1995 is in there because it has similar tropical pacific SSTs so far to 2020, and it offsets the super low ACE of 2007 to a large degree, with its super high ACE. It also "fixes" some of the unusually low snow totals you'd have in the NE without it included. 2003/2012 have been decent non-ENSO match for a while (super weak monsoon, very hot in the West at times, landfalling NE tropical systems, etc), and last year is in there because it's recent and because I'm still somewhat skeptical on how cold Nino 4 will get. Generally, the areas expected to do well for snow (NW, Rockies, New England, Midwest) already are.

The forecast lows in Albuquerque in the mid-20s with the 10/25-10/27 storm add confidence to my idea of at least semi-regular cold dumps making it into the Southwest for the winter. Long-term, the coldest temperature in October is highly correlated with total lows at or below 32F from October to May. A low of 25 or 26 in October, would imply something like ~98 lows <=32F for Oct-May, even accounting for the urban heat island and global warming effects locally. The MJO looks like it will start November in phase six. That's warm nationally, but seven is a lot colder. I'm kind of expecting something like high amplitude 6, then weaker 7-8 for November. Still early though, the models don't seem to have a great idea on the MJO for the next ten days at the moment. If you get a 6-7-8 transition in early November, that's a lot like 2016. The 1999 and 2007 transition was 5-7 in November, about two weeks behind reaching phase six compared to 2020. In 1998, the transition is 5-6 in November. 1996 went all the way from 5 to 1. Not really a lot of years that go 6-8 in November. Hopefully the models will depict a different outcome, but this is probably what the CFS sees right now. I don't really expect November to be this warm though.

The progression of the pattern recently, with the -NAO collapsing into huge cold dumps in Montana sort of reminds me of late January to February 2019. You had pretty intense cold in the Midwest - briefly - in both the current setup and back then, and then basically record cold for an extended period in Montana. The period after Epsilon and the storm this week in CO/NM and the Plains is probably going to be pretty quiet. I'd expect things to get more interesting around Thanksgiving though.

Pick three similar years in Nino 3.4 in winter and see how close any of them are nationally when you ignore the other factors. These are the winters I consider La Ninas from 1931 to 2019. Look at 1984 and 1933, or 2011 and 1995 as an extreme example: La Nina 3.4 DJF 1973 24.63 1988 24.83 1975 24.90 1999 24.95 2007 24.98 1998 25.07 1970 25.09 2010 25.21 1955 25.22 1949 25.26 1942 25.31 1950 25.41 1933 25.51 1984 25.55 1954 25.56 1964 25.69 1938 25.72 2017 25.72 1995 25.74 2011 25.76 1971 25.76 2008 25.79 2005 25.80 2000 25.87 1974 25.93 1983 26.00 1956 26.10 2016 26.30

I'd like to see a winter as volatile as 1970-71, but the national map for October is pretty much opposite 2020, which to me implies big MJO differences. It's a ~record cold Colorado / warm East coast look. My take is if the MJO is in opposite phases (for sensible weather in the US) this close to winter, it usually won't realign with the current year. 1999-00 is close to this year in October, and 2007 is kind of in between. The ACE index in 1970 was only 40 in the Atlantic, and it was high solar and a -NAO. So I'm not huge on it. That said, pretty powerful La Nina and it followed two El Ninos, which is pretty rare. We had accumulating snow in October 1970, which is rare (~once a decade for Albuquerque). So I don't think it's terrible. It meets the criteria for me as a "regional" analog, but not close enough to be good nationally. Starting Oct 16, each 30 day period through Spring was either very hot or very cold here in the 1970-71 cold season, so it'd be an interesting thing to see. Mid Oct-Mid Nov and Mid Jan-Mid Feb had essentially the same high here in 1970-71, which is nuts. I caved to the models, and made the October analog blend 2003 (x5), 1995, 2007 when I saw the CFS late September. But the winter blend actually looks fine overall for October, better than what the CFS / Canadian had. Should have kept it. The unweighted blend of 1995, 2003, 2007, 2012, 2019 has been pretty decent for US temps for a while now, at least spatially. The main miss this month will be the NW west of Montana. Heading into this month, the models has +5 to +10 anomalies in Montana, and they're already cold for the month despite the warm start, with record October cold coming this week. The SE warmth being strongest in TX/FL-SC is a feature I'd expect to see in winter, same with the SW warmth being strongest in Southern California/Arizona. A lot of the warmth here will be destroyed in the next week, but we'll still finish warm.

The models have a lot of snow for the Northern NM mountains in the coming days. It seems like 6-18" is possible generally, but I wouldn't be surprised if some spots got far more since there are hints of snow Sun Night to Weds Morning in some spots.

I hope you understand how severe 1970-71 is in small doses if you use it as an analog - lots of very fast changes in airmasses. The January high in Albuquerque wasn't even below average here despite the severity of this week, which saw multiple lows below -10F: I do think the rapid/severe change in airmasses is part of the pattern for the next few months in at least the Rockies. We're going to see 80s to snow this month after 90s to snow last month in NM & CO.

This is the furthest south I've ever seen a model show snow in October. It does snow here in October some years, even in La Ninas, but it's still kind of amazing. Really does rival the September storm, as a huge temperature drop in a short time. I guess the September setup was 50 degrees cooler here, but still. Record cold in Albuquerque in October would be highs in the 30s and lows below 20 or so. The weather service has 40s for highs and some 20s lows. We did drop to 22 last October one night.

I was toying with something like that originally but moved away from it for a few reasons. Weatherbell's original 2020-21 outlook was basically your blend, +2012, i.e. 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2012 as a blend. 1) The blend of those four years is very wet nationally. I think this is a pretty dry pattern for a lot of the US. Month to date, TX to CO and West has seen essentially no moisture this month (it will change soon though). 2016 and 2017 are night and day different for Western precip - record wetness in California one, and then ~5 months with no rain/snow in the other for places like Amarillo. 2) February 2019 is one of the coldest months on record for large areas of the US. I don't think we'll repeat it this year. The cold shot late January 2019 also rivalled the cold shots in the 1976-77 winter for severity in the Plains/Midwest/East. 3) 2018/2019 all had near record warmth in Nino 4 - which we don't have. Nino 4 is somewhat colder than the 1951-2010 average now. Just in the absence of the super hot Nino 4, I'd expect much more wintry conditions in the East in December (though I'd still go warmer than average). 4) Those are generally +PDO winters, which ties in with the precip being heavy. 5) I find La Nina strength/El Nino strength in an ONI /SST sense doesn't matter too much. But the year/year trends that match tend to produce similar teleconnections. So 2018 is a big warm up year over year in Nino 3.4, but the other three are cool downs.

I'm tempted to say "yes", but it'd be a bit arrogant at this point since the storm is still in the future and could fall apart or something. The rule is an upper low or closed low will appear in the SW domain, somewhere 30-38N, between Los Angeles and Dallas ten days after a 10 point drop in the daily SOI in one or two days. It doesn't work in June-September when the super subtropical highs that make the desert the desert are too strong. But someone looked at all the major SOI drops from 1990-2015 of 10 points and made a composite of it in winter, the "look" is for a low over the four corners. French name for the guy on Twitter, Jacque or something. 15 Oct 2020 1011.26 1009.50 -7.29 11.94 8.69 14 Oct 2020 1012.74 1010.20 -2.26 12.44 8.84 13 Oct 2020 1014.49 1010.00 10.31 12.58 8.77 If you look at the forecasts for Colorado/Northern NM, the low placement is right on time with the 17 point drop between 10/13 and 10/15, using the ten day rule. I find that the drops of 10 points with the SOI still very positive do lead to storms over the SW, but they tend to be completely moisture starved, and little more than dry cold fronts. That's why the recent drop coincides with a pretty big system on the models, but prior drops do not (although there was originally a system depicted around 10/13 following the crash early October). I had mentioned 10/24 in my forecast (from 10/10) as the approximate end of the dry spell in NM that began after the 9/9 system brought snow to NM and CO after highs in the mid 90s. More generally, I think the PDO looking more neutral lately and the Euro depicting a weakening La Nina are consistent with a storm down here. When La Ninas weaken or El Ninos strengthen (warming either way), the SW tends to get wet or cold. These are the years with accumulating snow in Albuquerque in October if it happens. It's a ~once a decade event since the 1930s. Monsoon Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb March April May Oct-May 1932 0.4 0.0 2.0 0.6 0.0 0.9 0.6 0.0 4.5 1967 0.2 1.0 2.8 0.0 2.0 1.4 0.0 0.0 7.4 1970 0.5 0.0 0.5 3.0 2.3 0.5 0.0 0.0 6.8 1973 0.3 0.6 0.1 9.3 0.6 2.0 0.0 0.0 12.9 1979 0.9 0.8 2.7 0.0 0.9 3.1 0.0 0.0 8.4 1986 3.2 0.6 0.2 4.9 4.9 0.2 2.2 0.0 16.2 1991 2.5 1.5 2.1 5.6 0.0 1.0 0.0 0.0 12.7 1996 1.1 2.5 0.0 4.7 0.9 0.3 2.9 0.0 12.4 2004 0.2 1.7 0.3 0.0 0.0 4.2 0.5 0.0 6.9 2009 0.8 0.0 0.7 1.0 0.9 0.8 0.0 0.0 4.2 The cold ENSO years with snow in October are pretty snowy/cold here in general: 1932 is frigid, 1967 is cold, the coldest day in the last 130 years here is in January 1971 (high of -1 I believe, low of -17), 1973-74 is snowy, and 1996-97 is pretty cold and snowy here. On Tropical Tidbits, 1967 is currently one of the top five SST matches globally for the past month, it's kind of a poor man's 1988.

The snowstorm depicted down here for late October is pretty unusual, but we do get accumulating snow even in some La Nina / cold Neutrals in that time frame. The CFS/Canadian depictions for October look pretty wrong now too, will be interesting to see if they get a better handle on the coming months.

I haven't looked in a few hours, but the SOI looked like it would see a few more substantially negative days by the end of the month on the European MSLP depiction. On the subsurface data, for 100-180W, most of the stronger La Ninas have had far stronger peaks than the current La Nina. Some of the weaker events (by ONI) have too. These are the subsurface peaks (by month), on a July-June basis for the La Ninas in the subsurface data (1979-2019). We'll likely beat some of these peaks in October, November or December but we're just approaching -1 now on the monthly data. 1998 -2.46 1983 -2.25 1988 -2.04 2010 -1.93 1999 -1.55 2007 -1.50 2008 -1.44 2011 -1.26 1995 -1.20 2005 -0.97 2017 -0.97 2000 -0.96 1984 -0.93

The SOI has been pretty negative for a few days now. I don't think this La Nina is super well connected to the atmosphere yet. That said, the weeklies look like they may drop below 25.0C in the Fall at some point - that's about as cold as it can get in Nino 3.4 in Oct-Feb. Strong La Ninas are below 25.0C in DJF. Nino1+2 Nino3 Nino34 Nino4 Week SST SSTA SST SSTA SST SSTA SST SSTA 09SEP2020 19.5-1.0 23.4-1.4 25.7-1.0 28.5-0.2 16SEP2020 20.0-0.4 23.6-1.3 25.9-0.8 28.2-0.4 23SEP2020 19.6-0.8 23.6-1.2 25.7-1.0 28.1-0.5 30SEP2020 20.1-0.5 23.8-1.1 25.6-1.1 27.9-0.7 07OCT2020 19.5-1.2 23.4-1.5 25.5-1.2 27.8-0.8 14OCT2020 19.6-1.2 23.6-1.3 25.3-1.4 27.8-0.9 17OCT2007 18.6-2.2 23.5-1.4 25.3-1.4 27.9-0.7 The subsurface and weekly data is still very similar to 2007. The coldest reading on record for October in Nino 3.4 (1950-2019) is 24.41C in 1955. So still a way from that. If we finish at 25.3C in October that would be 8th coldest October from 1950-2019.

Whether it's the MJO or something else, I do expect a fairly reliable series of strong cold shots to dive down the Plains/Rockies every 45 days or so. (9/9 to 10/25 is 45-days ish).