raindancewx

The thing that drives me nuts about Albuquerque is the airport does BS-y things with snow numbers, and precip in general. So they reported 0.09" of liquid equivalent as snow through about 5 pm. That number somehow is only 0.2 inches of snow. Despite temperatures 30-32F the entire period of accumulating snow. It was almost 60 yesterday, but it seems like it should be at least 0.5 inches. Visibility was under 2 miles for much of the snow Most of the city likely got far more precipitation too, although that's partly a snow shadowing issue. They'll probably update the snow total to something more reasonable later. The model precip was way overdone for sure, some of the models had 0.3-0.7" in the city, with half as snow. It's more like a 0.1-0.3" storm I'd say. The band in Arizona is likely to bring some additional precipitation, probably as snow. I've got one inch at my house a 6 pm, which is consistent with about 0.10" liquid so far.

I'm a big fan of the 3-km NAM at this range. Let's hope it verifies. Main issue for me will be if it gets cold enough. Dew points are low teens. But still in the upper 40s at almost 10 pm which is not ideal. I think we'd wet bulb to 36F or so at the moment, not quite cold enough/dry enough for snow. But the cold does seem to making the climb over the 7,000 pass into the Rio Grande Valley.

Winter Weather Advisory for me means Albuquerque should be ahead of the combined snow total for NYC, Philly, Baltimore & DC again if the advisory verifies. Currently pretty close - 4.6" v. 5.0". The new Jamstec has El Nino / near El Nino conditions lasting for another full year, with an extremely hot Spring for the US. The ideal El Nino Modoki look in Sep-October for severe eastern cold has crashed pretty hard since, which coincides well with the rapid warm up in the East since the severely cold start to November.

Looks like a nice storm for New Mexico.

Starting to look like a good precipitation event for New Mexico on Thursday. Lots of mountain snow. Might get some snow in the valleys too if the 12-km NAM is right.

Nino1+2 Nino3 Nino34 Nino4 Week SST SSTA SST SSTA SST SSTA SST SSTA 04DEC2019 22.5 0.1 25.3 0.2 26.9 0.3 29.4 0.9 11DEC2019 23.1 0.5 25.5 0.4 27.1 0.5 29.5 1.0 18DEC2019 23.3 0.4 25.5 0.3 27.2 0.6 29.5 1.1 25DEC2019 23.6 0.3 25.5 0.2 27.0 0.4 29.5 1.0 01JAN2020 23.7 0.1 25.7 0.3 27.2 0.7 29.6 1.2 08JAN2020 24.3 0.2 25.9 0.4 27.1 0.5 29.3 1.0 On the weekly update, subsurface warmth is actually higher than last January now (+0.7 and rising) https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf SOI has been positive but is correcting negative. Date Tahiti (hPa) Darwin (hPa) Daily Contribution 30 day Av. SOI 90 day Av. SOI 13 Jan 2020 1009.89 1005.85 -2.68 -5.49 -5.34 12 Jan 2020 1009.84 1005.45 -1.03 -5.78 -5.46 11 Jan 2020 1010.04 1004.25 5.56 -5.87 -5.52 10 Jan 2020 1011.34 1003.85 13.57 -6.09 -5.49 9 Jan 2020 1011.90 1005.60 7.97 -6.37 -5.59 8 Jan 2020 1011.88 1006.40 4.10 -6.72 -5.72 7 Jan 2020 1012.42 1006.75 5.00 -7.01 -5.90 6 Jan 2020 1014.76 1006.20 18.61 -7.02 -6.06 5 Jan 2020 1015.24 1006.70 18.52 -7.40 -6.28 4 Jan 2020 1014.00 1006.95 11.50 -7.88 -6.57 3 Jan 2020 1011.65 1008.60 -7.34 -8.54 -6.82 2 Jan 2020 1011.06 1010.15 -17.42 -8.42 -6.97 1 Jan 2020 1011.94 1008.85 -7.16 -7.54 -6.99

GFS/Euro are starting to show some decent rain/snow for New Mexico on Thursday-Friday, with some help from the sub tropical jet stream. Up to 4.6 inches of snow at the airport officially. I still like January as a big precipitation month for Albuquerque - we'll see how that goes. Elephant Butte Reservoir is 28.8% full right now. After all the snow melted last July, it peaked at 29.2% full. Should easily beat that - maybe with the next big precipitation event this winter. Elephant Butte likely will be the most full it has been since 2002 by Spring or Summer.

Euro has a fairly steep cool down of Nino 4 forecast through July. Nino 3.4 is expected to cool slowly and hang around +0.5C. The PDO has recovered to a pretty positive value on the JISAO/Mantua index. https://oceanview.pfeg.noaa.gov/erddap/tabledap/cciea_OC_PDO.htmlTable?time,PDO 2018-11-01T00:00:00Z -0.05 2018-12-01T00:00:00Z 0.52 2019-01-01T00:00:00Z 0.66 2019-02-01T00:00:00Z 0.46 2019-03-01T00:00:00Z 0.37 2019-04-01T00:00:00Z 1.07 2019-05-01T00:00:00Z 1.03 2019-06-01T00:00:00Z 1.09 2019-07-01T00:00:00Z 1.03 2019-08-01T00:00:00Z 0.38 2019-09-01T00:00:00Z 0.41 2019-10-01T00:00:00Z -0.45 2019-11-01T00:00:00Z 0.15 2019-12-01T00:00:00Z 0.97

Expecting January to be a warmer month than December for Nino 3.4 overall. The little patch of cold water has moved out of the region. Similar to last year now.

I'm starting to see some hints of big storms coming into the Southwest after the 15th - we'll see how that goes. Local records have a strong signal for a wet January after a wet November.

MJO currently looks like it could move back into phase four/five later in the month or in February. The high amplitude 4/5 call was depicted by late December, so it's likely the weakening phase five call is right - beyond that in late January...we'll see.

If you use 1951-2010 as the baseline, on average, Nino 3.4 will warm 0.2C from January to February. La Ninas typically weaken late Winter and Spring, so they warm more than 0.2C. El Ninos typically weaken late Winter and Spring, so they typically warm less than 0.2C because they are cooling/weakening. Last year, Nino 3.4 warmed from January to February by 0.28C - that is much more like a weakening La Nina. Now, look at the composite for an extra 0.1C of warming above the 0.2C average (i.e. a weakening La Nina reverting to Neutral), and look at the composite for at least 0.1C less warming than average: The map on the left is the ten most recent years that warmed at least 0.3C from Jan to Feb - typically La Ninas, but also 2019 which warmed 0.28C. Now...look at February 2019: It is an exaggerated, extreme version of the left map. I think it's all but guaranteed that Nino 3.4 finishes warmer in January than December. It's not a guarantee that February finishes 0.3C or more warmer than January - but I think it's pretty likely - remember 0.2C is how much warmer February is "typically", so you only need an extra 0.1C.

Nino1+2 Nino3 Nino34 Nino4 Week SST SSTA SST SSTA SST SSTA SST SSTA 04DEC2019 22.5 0.1 25.3 0.2 26.9 0.3 29.4 0.9 11DEC2019 23.1 0.5 25.5 0.4 27.1 0.5 29.5 1.0 18DEC2019 23.3 0.4 25.5 0.3 27.2 0.6 29.5 1.1 25DEC2019 23.6 0.3 25.5 0.2 27.0 0.4 29.5 1.0 01JAN2020 23.7 0.1 25.7 0.3 27.2 0.7 29.6 1.2 05DEC2018 23.1 0.8 26.2 1.1 27.6 1.0 29.7 1.2 12DEC2018 23.4 0.8 26.1 1.0 27.7 1.1 29.7 1.2 19DEC2018 23.7 0.7 26.2 1.0 27.6 1.0 29.5 1.0 26DEC2018 24.1 0.8 26.0 0.7 27.3 0.7 29.2 0.8 02JAN2019 23.9 0.2 26.1 0.6 27.3 0.7 29.1 0.8 SOI has spiked positive lately, in part due to the IOD collapsing, and developing hurricane activity by Australia.

GFS has backed off, but the Euro has accumulating snow for Albuquerque and much of New Mexico starting within five days now. Start time would be Thursday evening. Albuquerque had 0.3" precipitation for all of December, so that'd actually be the biggest storm in a while for us, if it verified exactly.

Albuquerque only has about six degrees of variation from the long-term average high for the past 100-years in winter (DJF) highs. We're deep enough into winter to confidently eliminate about half of that. With the high at 47.3F for 12/1-1/4, the winter here should finish at 49.6F, +/-3.1F at 90% certainty. The historical range is 49.5F, +/-6.3F essentially. Expecting the high to be right around 47.0F for 12/1-1/10 here, since it does look cold after Sunday. I'm increasingly concerned that the "E Pac Tropical Pacific Moisture Conveyor Belt" part of the pattern that appeared 11/16-11/30 will return, but is going to be a March thing. I think Jan 3 is roughly Sept 18 in terms of the pattern cycling through. If that pattern does cycle back, it's a major blizzard/heavy snowstorm pattern for the Southwest. I'm hesitant to be optimistic for Albuquerque, since the airport has never reported more than 3.8 inches of snow in March, in a low solar year back to 1931-32. High solar March will see ~30% of years top 3 inches of snow, compared to ~3% in low-solar, and its more like 75% in high solar El Ninos. I'm a little afraid of that March period verifying. The city has not had any snow in March since 2012. It is ridiculously, way way over due. So even though I don't expect it, with March 1975 being the only significant March snow in a low solar year, I wouldn't be shocked if we had some fluke 6-10 inch snow storm or something. The setup in November, an extended cold dry period, ending with an attack of very wet moist air moving over it, is probably our best possible setup for a March snowstorm. I'd imagine the NE gets their two big Nor'easters in March or late February if this part of the pattern is really set to come back. This is my working theory for timing - Sept 16-18 = Jan 1-3 Sept 25 = Jan 10 Oct 2 = Jan 17 (should be a big storm for the SW around Jan 19 in this scenario) Oct 19 = Jan 24 Oct 26 = Jan 31 Oct 31 = Feb 5 (record cold for the SW? - that happened on Halloween. The great Arctic Outbreak of Feb 2011, when ABQ fell to -7F, with a high of 9F, was on Feb 4, 2011) Nov 11-13 = Feb 16-18. This would be the time frame for the "Mother of Blue Northers" to relapse. Nov 15 = Feb 20 Nov 20 = Feb 25 (big storm?) Nov 27-29 = Mar 2-4. This is the time frame the big SW storm that brought big Nov snows to the Rio Grande Valley.

Long term, the Fall transitioned from a pretty canonical El Nino Modoki event - very warm Nino 4, cold by Indonesia & Peru, to kind of a mess. Anomalies below are 1951-2010 basis. December featured a very warm Nino 4 and a very warm Nino 1.2, with the heat skipping Nino 3/3.4 to some extent as a cold wave below the surface moved east. It's amusing to see 1953, 2003, 2004 among the top six matches to OND 2019 - I had experimented with using that exact blend for winter. You'd have certainly have the heat in the Plains that exists now, with the NE & SW relatively average. I didn't use it because I don't think it will hold the whole winter. That blend gets you the huge heat waves in the Summer (2003), a fairly high ACE value (2004), El Nino winter SSTs after El Nino (all), and fairly low solar with a Neutral PDO, and warm AMO. That blend with one or two other hot SE years thrown in will probably end up pretty close given how hot it has been outside the mountains of New England & the Southwest to date. I did use 1953 in my winter blend, but I substituted 2004 for 1992 since it had been the top objective Nino 3.4 match for Spring/Summer in 2019 by a country mile. The January pattern forecast looks more like January 1993 than January 2005 anyway.

Year DJF JFM FMA MAM AMJ MJJ JJA JAS ASO SON OND NDJ 2010 1.5 1.3 0.9 0.4 -0.1 -0.6 -1.0 -1.4 -1.6 -1.7 -1.7 -1.6 2011 -1.4 -1.1 -0.8 -0.6 -0.5 -0.4 -0.5 -0.7 -0.9 -1.1 -1.1 -1.0 2012 -0.8 -0.6 -0.5 -0.4 -0.2 0.1 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.2 0.0 -0.2 2013 -0.4 -0.3 -0.2 -0.2 -0.3 -0.3 -0.4 -0.4 -0.3 -0.2 -0.2 -0.3 2014 -0.4 -0.4 -0.2 0.1 0.3 0.2 0.1 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.7 2015 0.6 0.6 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.5 1.8 2.1 2.4 2.5 2.6 2016 2.5 2.2 1.7 1.0 0.5 0.0 -0.3 -0.6 -0.7 -0.7 -0.7 -0.6 2017 -0.3 -0.1 0.1 0.3 0.4 0.4 0.2 -0.1 -0.4 -0.7 -0.9 -1.0 2018 -0.9 -0.8 -0.6 -0.4 -0.1 0.1 0.1 0.2 0.4 0.7 0.9 0.8 2019 0.8 0.8 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.3 0.1 0.1 0.3 0.5 CPC has +0.5C for OND (+0.46C v. their baseline). 27.11C in December. Using my older 1951-2010 base base, that's a +0.66C reading in Nino 3.4 - still real weak. Until September, 1992 was easily the top match in Nino 3.4 since 1950. Starting January, 1993 should become a pretty good match once again going by surface and subsurface readings in Nino 3.4. QBO is still positive, for those of you who consider that important. 2004-05 looks like a solid match now. 2004 -4.84 2.61 5.45 10.46 12.97 11.75 9.96 8.74 7.29 8.00 4.35 2.45 2005 -0.69 -0.96 -0.33 -6.64 -15.09 -20.59 -24.20 -25.87 -27.80 -28.76 -29.55 -25.04 2019 9.02 9.25 11.82 13.36 14.59 14.36 10.96 9.97 8.25 7.27 5.07 1.66

Just for fun, here is the list of years since 1931-32, where Albuquerque has had more snow than DC, Baltimore, NYC, and Philly combined through January 2. The four NE cities average 5.1, 3.7, 3.4, 2.8 respectively for total snow through the end of December...or 15 inches in total in an average year. Albuquerque averages 1/4 of that - 3.7 inches through December in an average year. Looks a lot like what the models have for January. Completely different for February. Almost all are good Oct-May periods for snow out here, except for 1954-55, 1949-50, 2001-02.

Subsurface heat came in warmer in December than November, as expected. https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ocean/index/heat_content_index.txt This is the top match I could find, with each month within 0.1. 100W-180W Oct Nov Dec 1981 0.25 0.02 -0.22 1981 0.25 0.02 -0.22 1986 0.95 0.52 0.97 1986 0.95 0.52 0.97 1986 0.95 0.52 0.97 2005 -0.14 -0.57 -0.74 2018 1.59 1.36 1.06 Blend 0.69 0.34 0.40 2019 0.70 0.26 0.34 Blend is less warm nationally than the Canadian/CFS.

The Canadian has El Nino conditions through January, and then La Nina developing in April/May 2020 It is on board with the CFS for the cold West / hot East January pattern. Interestingly it sort of had that look figured out Nov 30. So far, my precipitation forecast for winter from October 12th, 2019 has been going better than my temperature forecast (I had Warm/Cold/Warm for West,Central,East respectively in December - the cold didn't really verify Central). Will be interesting to see if that continues.

The SOI was very different this year in Oct-Dec. Implies radically different Jan/Feb than in 2019. The match composite was basically correct last year too. The left figures are for 2019, the right from 2018. Amplification was wrong, but the SOI blends had the right spatial ideas for Jan-Feb 2019.

Nino1+2 Nino3 Nino34 Nino4 Week SST SSTA SST SSTA SST SSTA SST SSTA 27NOV2019 22.5 0.4 25.4 0.4 27.0 0.4 29.3 0.8 04DEC2019 22.5 0.1 25.3 0.2 26.9 0.3 29.4 0.9 11DEC2019 23.1 0.5 25.5 0.4 27.1 0.5 29.5 1.0 18DEC2019 23.3 0.4 25.5 0.3 27.2 0.6 29.5 1.1 25DEC2019 23.5 0.3 25.5 0.2 27.0 0.4 29.4 1.0 The weekly site doesn't have the new numbers, but they are here - https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf Here is the simplest blend I could find using El Nino-ish years that look like the CFS for January. 1951, 1957 are the top SOI matches Oct-Dec. 1992, 2018 are the top matches from my winter forecast. I threw in 1905 for some other reasons. If you want a super recent blend that matches the CFS, January 2013/2017 is close too. I suspect the colder blend is more realistic but we'll see. Also think the CFS might be pretty wrong. The top SOI match for Oct-Nov-Dec (pending 12/31) is likely 1951/1957. The January 1952/1958 blend looks a lot like what the CFS has. I mentioned this in one of the regional threads, but the Dec temperature map will bear a lot of resemblance to 8/16-9/15. The CFS January forecast looks a lot like 9/16-10/15, Cold West / Warm East. February would then be the 10/16-11/15 period i.e. it would be very cold in the middle of the US. This is all assuming the CFS is right for January. These aren't exact matches, but it shows a cycling pattern if the CFS is right. The -SOI in December is also a much colder signal for February 2020 compared to last year.

In an SOI sense, December has gone from a La Nina state in 2018 (+9.2) to an El Nino state in 2019 (-7.0 or so). The December SOI is highly correlated to temperatures in the following February for the NW & SE US. The +9.2 SOI was the only historical early indicator of the hot East / frigid West February last year. Even though the correlation map doesn't show it, the SW tends to get very cold when there is a flip from a La Nina to an El Nino (<=26.0C DJF in Nino 3.4 to >=27.0C DF in Nino 3.4 in one year). The biggest Nino 3.4 warm ups in a single year, from cold to warm, include, in recent years, 2006, 2009, 2018 - all quite cold here. I'll be very curious to see if there is a cold February out here in light of the "SOI base state" going from La Nina to El Nino. The top SOI flips Dec/Dec that match 2018/2019 well in the past 100 years include 1946, 1957, 1989, 1997, 2001, 2004, 2009. In a timing sense, Aug 16-Sept 15 has matched the Dec 2019 pattern fairly well for US temps, the CFS January forecast looks a lot like Sept 16-Oct 15. So if the CFS is right for January and the timing pattern holds, I'd expect Oct 16-Nov 15 to look like February 2020 - a frigid month for the central US. As a composite, the years I listed for the SOI Dec/Dec change favor the entire South cold and the entire North cold in February. I'd expect a blend of the two for February, maybe one part of the month is very cold across the entire South, VA to CA, and the other part of the month is very cold between the Rockies & the Mississippi. CPC uses 26.65C as the basis for Nino 3.4 average in December. So ~27.15C or so on the weeklies should count as a +0.5C month. ONI for OND will likely be right around +0.5C, despite CPC insisting on a 70% odds of Neutral conditions in Fall. CPC also tends to warm up the most recent old month or two by 0.05C or so when the new data comes in, which helps with the likelihood of a +0.5C reading.

Cold water is gone from Nino 3.4 once again. Ties in well with the big SOI response after the positive readings Dec 1-10.

I have four methods for predicting Spring precipitation here: NDJ + Solar conditions Closest Precip Patterns July-Dec Replicate Precip Patterns July-Dec Statistical Regression The middle two methods imply a pretty wet Spring. I have a lot more faith in the third method this year compared to the second, as it was very difficult to mimic July-Dec 2019 with historical data this year. Heavily reliant on 1905 & 2004 to do it, with other years in there as 'fix its'. Essentially, you try to match the data in black for July-Dec with the blend. The green is then the forecast from the rolled forward blend. You can see how well the blend did last year, even though I gave up on November.