raindancewx

SOI is -9.8 for the past 30-days, -9.3 for the past 90 days, and -10 for November to date. I've got 7.5 inches of snow in my backyard, with near record precipitation for November (1.65") through 11 am 11/28. A lot of that near record precipitation is snow...which is certainly more of an El Nino thing than a Neutral thing here - PDO still looks somewhat negative to me for November - you can have warm waters on the NW North America coast if they are relatively cold compared to waters off to their West and have a -PDO month. It's a relational calculation, not absolute like ENSO, where warm is El Nino, cold is La Nina. Subsurface still looks warm to me. The little cold pocket is going to get its ass kicked in the coming weeks. The warm waters continue to surface by Peru as we transition out of the Modoki El Nino to a basin wide event.

I had 3.5" with the New Mexico storm by 10:50 pm on 11/27 in my backyard, about 10-miles due north of the airport site, at the same elevation. As of 1:30 am on 11/28, I'm up to 5.0". Airport in Albuquerque has had 0.19" fall as snow with temperatures between 28-32F the entire time. I think they're probably around 2.3" so far. The cold dry air has really held it's own so far. We went from 37F / 14F dew point to 32F / 25F dew point in an hour flat from 6 pm to 7 pm.

Definitely a real snow storm here - this is I-25 and Paseo Random Twitter pics -

Albuquerque went from around 40F with a 12F dew point at 2 pm, to about 31F with a 25F dew point at 7:30, thanks to the magic of evaporative cooling. Some accumulating snow already where I am, with the airport already seeing some too officially.

I went with 0-3" <5200 feet, 2-5" 5200-5600 feet, and 3-7" 5600-6100 feet in Albuquerque. It's a wet bulb storm for us in the city, we'll begin the day with temps in the low 20s or high teens (thanks for the cold dry air), before warming to the high 30s or low 40s, then the rain starts, but the sunsets, the dew point rises, but it cools the air as the moisture evaporates. Window for Albuquerque is likely 8 pm to 4 am for accumulating snow if you buy the 3-km NAM. Higher areas will start out earlier and last longer. But it's a 16 hour precip event before the next storm, and something lie 8-12 hours of it should be snow for the city. But, it is complicated here. I generally like this setup though, we had very low dew points in Feb 2015 at the surface, and then subtropical moisture moved on top of it. The subtropical warmth won, eventually, but first we had 6-12 in the city, 2/26-2/28. It's not super different from this setup.

My concern for later periods is the the Indian Ocean Dipole. Can't hang on as strong as it is for much longer. Near impossible to get sustained low pressure by Australia with it in place, and so the SOI keeps going bonkers, more than you'd expect from an El Nino this weak. Speaking of the SOI...another big 10 point drop. You know the drill. Watch for a big storm in the SW in ten days...and actually the GFS already has something in the vein of the current pattern: tropical input from the subtropical jet, coming in roughly the same time as a big low from the northern branch entering California. I'd have to look at the maps of 1992-93, but if this continues for any length of time in winter here, we've got a shot at record or near-precip this winter. These storms coming in have 0.50-1.00" precip each - huge for the interior SW.

For anyone curious, here is a list of the major Indian Ocean Dipole events in Sept-Nov for 1880-2004. This is built into my analog system when I look at the Pacific to some extent, although I don't give it much weight in winter, except as a tie-breaker. It's more important in Fall. Part of how I had 1994 last year. https://iri.columbia.edu/~blyon/REFERENCES/P38.pdf

I had some pretty big Novembers in Colorado in my analogs. 1992 has had some similarities in recent weeks, and has been a strong precip analog here since July - near identical monthly totals excepts in August when a thunderstorm missed our airport. Even blended in with some of the lesser years, there was a pretty good signal for snow for Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico in November this year. December will likely quiet down some for Colorado, but we'll see how that goes.

Weaker and more West based than last year, but certainly a Modoki El Nino at least for Fall (we seem to be transitioning to a basin-wide look though for actual winter). Japan uses 165E-140W, 10N-10S as their Nino 3.4 ("Box A") - that zone is definitely in an El Nino look. The waters by Peru are colder too. So more of a Modoki than last year. Will be curious to see if the +SOI the CFS continues to show for December has to do with the Indian Ocean Dipole flipping this month, hard to get the Australia part of the +SOI without that.

I went with 1-4", 2-5", 4-8" for Albuquerque by elevation Wed-Thu tentatively - but may change tomorrow. The models all have at least some kind of transition to snow in the city late, it's just how quickly, and how much moisture. European keeps showing 6-12" for the whole city, which I think is way too high for most. NAM has 1-4" which I think is probably too low for some areas. GFS is 0-1", with hardly any rain even.

We've fallen off the pace of last year, except in Nino 4. Still West-based overall, but the heat is getting to Nino 1.2 now. SOI 11/1-11/25 is about -10 - solidly El Nino by that measure. Also, the European has been showing 9.0 inches of snow for Albuquerque (last two runs) through Thanksgiving morning. Don't really buy it, but if I'm wrong, that's a season of snow, and that is correlated to lower snow in the NE US in El Ninos. Nino1+2 Nino3 Nino34 Nino4 Week SST SSTA SST SSTA SST SSTA SST SSTA 25SEP2019 20.0-0.5 24.8-0.1 27.2 0.5 29.7 1.1 02OCT2019 20.0-0.6 25.1 0.3 27.2 0.5 29.7 1.0 09OCT2019 19.7-1.0 24.8-0.1 27.1 0.4 29.5 0.9 16OCT2019 20.6-0.2 25.3 0.4 27.5 0.8 29.7 1.1 23OCT2019 19.7-1.3 25.0 0.1 27.3 0.6 29.7 1.0 30OCT2019 20.8-0.4 25.4 0.5 27.4 0.7 29.6 0.9 06NOV2019 20.7-0.6 25.2 0.3 27.2 0.5 29.3 0.7 13NOV2019 20.9-0.6 25.6 0.6 27.4 0.8 29.6 0.9 20NOV2019 21.7-0.1 25.6 0.6 27.4 0.7 29.5 1.0 26SEP2018 20.2-0.3 25.5 0.6 27.3 0.6 29.3 0.6 03OCT2018 21.3 0.7 25.6 0.7 27.4 0.7 29.5 0.8 10OCT2018 21.1 0.4 25.6 0.7 27.3 0.6 29.5 0.9 17OCT2018 21.1 0.3 25.9 1.0 27.6 0.9 29.6 0.9 24OCT2018 21.3 0.3 25.9 1.0 27.7 1.1 29.8 1.1 31OCT2018 21.4 0.2 25.9 0.9 27.8 1.2 29.8 1.1 07NOV2018 22.1 0.8 25.8 0.9 27.4 0.8 29.5 0.9 14NOV2018 22.2 0.6 25.8 0.8 27.4 0.7 29.5 0.9 21NOV2018 22.6 0.8 26.3 1.3 27.9 1.3 29.6 1.0

This is one of the widest spreads I've ever seen for Albuquerque within 84 hours - literally near 0 rain to near 10 inches of snow. I've been leaning toward a coating to three with some rain, but I'd like to see the European win.

This would be a good little storm for Albuquerque - 24 hours through Thanksgiving Morning.

Some re-development of the warmth below the surface, but that little cold area may make it up anyway. That's kind of what happened in 1992-93, which was very similar to this year in June-Sept at the surface, before a small cold area showed up Nino 3.4 at the surface in winter. Then, in early 1993, more warmth surfaced and El Nino returned.

I'd really like to see another 0.7"+ precipitation here by the end of the month. We haven't had a record wet-month for the 1931-now era in Albuquerque since September 2013 when 3.97" fell. The GFS and European are really struggling with the storms for NM & CO this week again. I think they'll start to have a unified message by Sunday Night though. Weather.com currently has a snowy Wednesday Night for Albuquerque, which would be a mess for travel. There are some striking similarities to the Fall pattern so far, both in the US and for global ocean patterns/oscillations. One thing that would really cement last year as a good analog is the CFS depiction of a positive SOI burst (La Nina) in December, at basically the same magnitude as last December. I don't think the once-in-a-century cold places like Billings experienced last February would necessary repeat, but you'd probably see another warm month in the SE US with cold displaced somewhere to the NW of that zone if the SOI verified at +10 in December. It'd be a huge change from November if nothing else, since we are running around -9 so far.

CFS is starting to go to my December forecast, with a cold center of the US. Here is the scary thing: it has a big +SOI (La Nina) in December. That happened last year. If it happens again, the South will roast later in the winter. See how the red is by 150W, 15S and the blue is by Australia around 15S? That's where Darwin & Tahiti are. In December 2018, Darwin was 1006.2 MB, and Tahiti was 1011.7 MB for a +9.14 SOI. Map below has ~1006 for Darwin and ~1012 for Tahiti.

So far, the Northwest mountains have been getting screwed on precipitation, while the Southwest has been doing OK to well.

Not looking great for people forecasting a dry winter in the Southwest. If the storm forecast over NM verifies next week, we may have record November precipitation for Albuquerque for the last 100 years. Already at 1.25" (average is 0.46"), and the record is 1.93". Already top five for wetness. Long-term, November precipitation tends to indicate January precipitation here fairly well too. Not to mention the fact that May precipitation here is highly correlated (r-squared near 0.3) to Nov-Jan precipitation totals here. Wet May here favors warm East/tornado patterns fairly often. Here is the composite for what follows after particularly wet Novembers in Albuquerque. It stays wet. Pretty El Nino-y too, which is shocking. It's not really that surprising though, this has been signaled since September - a big -SOI September is strongly correlated to a very wet January in the West, especially Northern California.

We're at 1.25" precipitation in November through 5 pm 11/21 in Albuquerque. The storm that times up with the big SOI drop around 11/18 is still shown for 11/28 or so. The 1.25" is already near record November precipitation, wettest November here since 2004. Since 1931, the record wettest November here is 1991, around 1.9" - we may beat that actually, as it may rain or snow a bit tomorrow before the 11/28 system. In the past 90 years, November is correlated pretty well to January for precipitation - typically the wetter November is, the wetter January is. Last big wet November here was in 2016, and then January 2017 was very wet too.

Gary Lezak winter forecast is supposed to be out next week. It's been pretty cold Oct-Nov in Missouri/Kansas, which is where is I had the cold centered in winter, I imagine he'll have something similar since he looks at Fall patterns for the LRC. Might not be super wet though.

This looks pretty good right now. Denver is warmer than normal through 11/20 after a cold start, and we're getting a big snow storm 11/21 in New Mexico. Albuquerque is probably just above normal now through 11/20, but will fall below again by the end of the month. For December, I had the center of the US pretty cold, including Colorado and New Mexico, with temperatures trending to slightly above average on both coasts. There is a pretty strong tendency in El Ninos for whatever the US pattern in the second half of October is to shift East, and become the December pattern. That matches my analogs. Last year, you had tremendous heat centered in Montana in the second half of October, and that shifted East keeping the North/East warm. The H2 Oct, but East thing has worked for all El Nino Decembers since 2009 - will be curious to see how it does this year. H2 October Shifted East My Raw Analogs, but +2F for a warmer Nino 4, looks damn close to the spatially adjusted Oct 16-31 observations:

One thing that I can't help but notice with last Fall is how well each two week period corresponded to Winter 2018-19. Will be very interesting to see if that happens again with some similar features (AMO, Solar, ENSO, IOD, MJO timing) to last year. H1 October was February - not as extreme, but close (a lot of the blue areas in Feb were 10-25 below average) In December, the placement was somewhat different, but the cold West Texas warm North idea was there - its just the heat moved East. If the heat had been centered a bit East over ND in H2 October, the cold would have shot up into the West. The first half of November looked like a de-amplified January, with warm coasts and a much colder middle of the US. If the timing relationships were to hold, January & February would be the similar months to last year. December would be very different - with the center of the US very cold, warmer on the coasts (that's what my forecast had, by the way). Here is a look at how this has played out in some recent El Ninos for December 2015 (H2 Oct v. Dec) - similar shift East of the heat like in 2018. 2014 (H2 Oct v. Dec) - some shift in the heat again to the East. Again, some shift east in the heat over Montana in 2009. Now, here is 2019 - I think you have to expect the cold center over Kansas to move East given the recent history? So slightly warm coasts, cold middle. That was my forecast too.

These are (tentative) top SOI monthly matches for Sept/Oct/Nov objectively, for the past 90 years or so - Year Sept Oct Nov Distance 2019 -12.7 -5.2 -9.0 0.0 1951 -11.2 -12.3 -8.5 9.1 1987 -10.6 -5.3 -1.5 9.7 1932 -8.3 -4.1 -4.6 9.9 2014 -6.6 -8.2 -8.0 10.1 1957 -9.4 -0.3 -11.0 10.2 1953 -13.0 -0.3 -2.7 11.5 Looks familiar to me...although I didn't forecast this exactly for December. I do expect the composite warmth/cold to be shifted somewhat east. SOI has had some really impressive negative bursts this month: Date Tahiti (hPa) Darwin (hPa) Daily Contribution 30 day Av. SOI 90 day Av. SOI 19 Nov 2019 1008.38 1009.80 -27.36 -8.52 -8.87 18 Nov 2019 1009.78 1011.20 -27.36 -7.24 -8.68 17 Nov 2019 1012.24 1010.80 -9.17 -5.97 -8.53 16 Nov 2019 1013.57 1010.40 1.84 -5.59 -8.31 15 Nov 2019 1012.81 1009.85 0.51 -5.56 -8.25 14 Nov 2019 1012.31 1010.45 -6.49 -5.67 -8.17 13 Nov 2019 1012.54 1011.25 -10.12 -5.90 -8.28 12 Nov 2019 1011.94 1010.50 -9.17 -5.76 -8.39 11 Nov 2019 1011.42 1010.05 -9.61 -5.18 -8.48 10 Nov 2019 1011.08 1010.50 -14.64 -4.71 -8.51 9 Nov 2019 1011.85 1010.70 -11.01 -4.37 -8.38 8 Nov 2019 1013.13 1010.25 -0.00 -4.38 -8.23 7 Nov 2019 1013.77 1008.40 15.84 -4.69 -8.01 6 Nov 2019 1011.56 1009.75 -6.81 -5.28 -7.93 5 Nov 2019 1008.71 1011.25 -34.49 -5.28 -7.64 4 Nov 2019 1008.28 1010.80 -34.36 -4.51 -7.07 3 Nov 2019 1010.91 1009.65 -10.31 -4.05 -6.62 2 Nov 2019 1011.56 1009.15 -2.99 -4.37 -6.53 1 Nov 2019 1011.89 1008.60 2.61 -4.95 -6.63

I like 10-30 inches for our mountains by Friday morning, and then maybe a bit more on Friday. Something like 1.00-1.25" at a 22:1 ratio for the highest mountains. Not sure if it will verify, but my gut says there will be some dry bulb magic with this system late, and it might (briefly) snow down to 5,000 to 6,000 feet, with a quick inch even in Albuquerque on Thursday Night or Friday Morning.