raindancewx

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.

Yeah I know. The better shot was today - it was about 50 at 11 pm EST when I looked yesterday. The +30 departures today in the NE are worth ~+0.3 for the entire winter though, which is impressive for one day. You guys have had it easy anyway, Philadelphia is approaching a bottom ten snow total through mid-January at this point. Still only 0.1" officially.

Warmest low temperature back to the 1800s for Boston in January is 55F in 1950. Here's hoping you break the record. 1932 and 1906, two good precipitation matches locally, are up there in second/third place. Weather Channel has a low of 59F on Saturday. That's like late June/early July level lows out here.

ENSO (El Nino, Neutral, La Nina) is kind of a semi-stationary pattern in the Tropical Pacific, which is why it is useful for seasonal forecasting. The MJO is a signal for changes within the season, because it moves around the world, essentially as a coherent band of thunderstorms, and ends up where it started in 30-60 day increments. If the MJO is in the right spot, it can also dry out a region of the tropics. The placement of the thunderstorms changes which areas of the US are favored for cold/warmth, dryness/wetness. The placement can enhance or reduce the dominant effect of an El Nino or La Nina, if that effect is in place. There is evidence of solar changes impacting the MJO too, in some research. More intense MJO patterns can often take over as the dominant force in a pattern for a bit. Like now, with the ~60F lows in January in the Northeast corridor. https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/enso/what-mjo-and-why-do-we-care

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.

For reference -

Some snow is depicted through Friday Morning for NM/CO on the GFS and Euro. I'm leaning toward ~30F, 0.20" as snow here. With no East Wind, that's around two inches of snow. Looks like Thursday Night - Friday Morning mostly.

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.

The two week period he mentions is kind of impressive historically - Long term, I think the NE snow season is gradually shifting later and shorter, from a mid Nov-early Apr time frame for big snows, to late Dec to late March. That Feb 15 - Apr 15 period is always going to be somewhat protected for you guys with the Atlantic at its coldest. At this point, I'm just curious to see when the NYC + Philly + Baltimore + DC snow total will get ahead of ABQ snow to date. It's possible it happens this week, but even it does, I think we'll get at least some snow mid/late month. Long-term, your magic number for ~never getting above average snow seems to be a high of about 41/42F or more in DJF. Correlation between the 12/1-1/4 high and the 12/1-2/28 high is actually much stronger in Boston than for Albuquerque. The high of 44.1F for 12/1-1/4 in Boston implies, ~40.4F for DJF, +/-2.9F at 90% certainty. By itself, not a warm enough start to imply below average snow...but of course the mid month looks real warm, with some days in the 50s probably. The data for both graphs is 1931-32 to 2018-19 for Boston.

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.

Sept 16-18 is very close to Jan 1-3 nationally. Supports the idea that Sept 16-Oct 15 will look like January 2020...and that Oct 16-Nov 15 will look like February 2020 - severely cold in the middle of the US. Aug 16-Sept 15 looked like December, very warm, but little pieces of cold held temps down in the Northern Plains & New England. Not exact matches, but it has been holding up fairly well. The Sept 16-Oct 15 periods looks like what the models show too. The 85F in Jacksonville was pretty impressive the other day, remind me of when it was over 100 in early October in Alabama. .

I've been looking at 1905-06 & 1936-37 a fair bit. The Fall of 1949 had a record warm November in the SW (65.9F high here...5300 feet up - remarkable), with no moisture, so I think the MJO must have been pretty different, since we had a very wet November regionally, with near normal to cold temperatures. The 1905 November had record precipitation here - not just for November...any month. Since 1892. As far as January matching mid-Sept to mid-Oct goes, and using that period as a model match, it looks pretty good so far. The CFS/Canadian both trended to a colder look than in the second image. If you buy that mid-Aug to mid-Sept looked like Dec, and that mid-Sept to mid-Oct looks like January, then the middle of the US should get very cold in February if it is to mimic Oct 16-Nov 15. That cold air will break out of Western Canada at some point, just don't think it will fully push into the South.

I saw Eric Fisher mentioned Boston hasn't been 32F or less since Dec 22, 2019. That's a pretty remarkable streak. As far as evaluating my stuff goes, I don't really care if a call is above/below average, I score myself on the absolute value of the difference between reality and the forecast. So for December, it'd be (Fcst-Obs)/(Obs). So (8.5-11.5)/11.5 --- a 26.1% error on a blend made in early October for December. It's not amazing, but I'm not even trying to forecast monthly snow totals really, so I'll take it - I'm much more interested in the seasonal totals, and when we get to late April I'll release how well I did for snow nationally, I included a couple dozen cities in my outlook, all over the US. If you look at the SST data from Oct-Dec, we've gone from a pretty canonical, even an idealized, El Nino Modoki, which favored the cold East in late Oct/Nov, to a setup where Nino 4 is warm, but the solid gradation of very warm Nino 4 to very cool Nino 1.2 is gone. Nino 1.2 was way warmer in an anomaly sense than Nino 3 and Nino 3.4 in December.

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.

You guys aren't doing half bad for winter so far relative to the rest of the country. I think going forward, El Nino should be viewed more in the context of elevation than it is now. The mountains of New England & the Southwest are probably the only areas of the US with a real shot of a cold winter still. Maybe the Northern Plains too, Billings was similarly warm through last January and still finished cold, because their weather is stupid amazing in term of variation, it was 22F below or something in February after something like a +7 Dec-Jan. For most of the US, a month 20F below average is lottery odds to physically impossible. These are 12/1-1/3 temps v. 1981-2010 averages nationally. Roger Smith had mentioned the mid-January torch in his mid-October forecast - pretty good. Nashville: (8.0 x 31) + (3 x 11.3) / 34 --> +8.3F Billings: (6.6 x 31) + (3 x 12.3) / 34 --> +7.1F Chicago: (6.3 x 31) + (3 x 13.0) / 34 --> +6.9F Kansas City: (6.4 x 31) + (3 x 12.3) / 34 --> 6.9F Jacksonville: (5.4 x 31) + (3 x 9.7) / 34 --> +6.3F Atlanta: (5.9 x 31) + (3 x 7.3) /34 --> +6.0F Detroit: (5.0 x 31) + (3 x 13.0) / 34 --> +5.7F Amarillo: (5.0 x 31) + (3 x 5.0) / 34 --> +5.0F New Orleans: (4.0 x 31) + (3 x 10.3) / 34 --> +4.6F Seattle: (3.9 x 31) + (3 x 6.2) / 34 --> +4.1F Salt Lake City: (3.6 x 31) + (3 x 5.5) / 34 --> +3.8F Denver: (3.7 x 31) + (3 x 3.3) / 34 --> +3.7F Pittsburgh: (3.0 x 31) + (3 x 10.7) / 34 --> +3.7F Richmond: (3.0 x 31) + (3 x 9.5) / 34 --> +3.6F Houston: (3.2 x 31) + (3 x 6.0) / 34 --> +3.4F Boston: (2.5 x 31) + (3 x 13) / 34 --> +3.4F San Francisco: (2.9 x 31) + (3 x 3.0) / 34 --> +2.9F Oklahoma City: (2.3 x 31) + (3 x 7.0) / 34 --> +2.7F San Diego:(2.2 x 31) + (3 x 2.4) / 34 --> +2.2F Philadelphia: (1.2 x 31) + (3 x 5.5) / 34 --> +1.6F Albuquerque: (1.3 x 31) + (3 x -2.2) / 34 --> +1.0F Flagstaff: (-0.2 x 31) + (3 x -4.0) / 34 --> -0.5F

I wanted to bump this - Roger's idea of an eastern blowtorch mid-January from mid-October looks quite good. The MJO going into phase five at high amplitude should be good for NM/CO snow pack at least in mid-January. Here is what the US looks like to date..."before" the warm part of the pattern arrives. As I've noted elsewhere, the model pattern (CFS/Canadian/CPC) for January 2020 in the US looks a lot like mid-Sept to mid-Oct...as I hinted at 10/16. Nashville: (8.0 x 31) + (3 x 11.3) / 34 --> +8.3F Billings: (6.6 x 31) + (3 x 12.3) / 34 --> +7.1F Chicago: (6.3 x 31) + (3 x 13.0) / 34 --> +6.9F Kansas City: (6.4 x 31) + (3 x 12.3) / 34 --> 6.9F Jacksonville: (5.4 x 31) + (3 x 9.7) / 34 --> +6.3F Atlanta: (5.9 x 31) + (3 x 7.3) /34 --> +6.0F Detroit: (5.0 x 31) + (3 x 13.0) / 34 --> +5.7F Amarillo: (5.0 x 31) + (3 x 5.0) / 34 --> +5.0F New Orleans: (4.0 x 31) + (3 x 10.3) / 34 --> +4.6F Seattle: (3.9 x 31) + (3 x 6.2) / 34 --> +4.1F Salt Lake City: (3.6 x 31) + (3 x 5.5) / 34 --> +3.8F Denver: (3.7 x 31) + (3 x 3.3) / 34 --> +3.7F Pittsburgh: (3.0 x 31) + (3 x 10.7) / 34 --> +3.7F Richmond: (3.0 x 31) + (3 x 9.5) / 34 --> +3.6F Houston: (3.2 x 31) + (3 x 6.0) / 34 --> +3.4F Boston: (2.5 x 31) + (3 x 13) / 34 --> +3.4F San Francisco: (2.9 x 31) + (3 x 3.0) / 34 --> +2.9F Oklahoma City: (2.3 x 31) + (3 x 7.0) / 34 --> +2.7F San Diego:(2.2 x 31) + (3 x 2.4) / 34 --> +2.2F Philadelphia: (1.2 x 31) + (3 x 5.5) / 34 --> +1.6F Albuquerque: (1.3 x 31) + (3 x -2.2) / 34 --> +1.0F Flagstaff: (-0.2 x 31) + (3 x -4.0) / 34 --> -0.5F

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.

MJO phase five at high amplitude mid-month should be good for NM & CO for moisture. My original analogs for winter, in my October forecast had 1/12-1/16 as a storm time frame that showed up in multiple years. That looks pretty good. GFS has had something coming through in that range for a few runs now, and the big SOI crash last night supports it....and obviously the MJO should be in phase five by then.

If we go by the prior min, the solar cycle is about to bottom out. 2019 had 3.6 sunspots/month, down from 4.2 in 2008. Absolute min was 2.2 in the year ending May 2009 in the prior cycle. I find that certain types of unusual events are far more likely to happen in the US below 55-sunspots/month annualized, at statistically significant levels over long-periods. I don't think it changes total heat on Earth much, just the distribution of it, mostly via effects on clouds. Albuquerque just had its coldest year since 2008. All the years at the min are actually pretty cold here. We had the 28th coldest annual high since 1931. Lows are not really impacted by solar at all, and were still real warm. City had 10.6 inches of snow in 2019 - most since 2015. I'm pretty sure Albuquerque has had more snow so far that NYC, Philly, Baltimore and DC combined this cold season. Outside the NW, I think Western Snow Pack and Reservoir numbers overall are pretty strong heading into 2020. The precipitation portion of my outlook has been pretty good so far, so I'd expect a more active January than December. Probably will be when/if the big Eastern heat wave comes since MJO phase five is pretty wet in the Southwest in January. MJO getting to phase four around 1/6 is similar to 2005, 2007, 2013.