raindancewx

Locally, we've never had a July-June with under 4 inches of rain back to 1892. But July-September is our wet season (~4")...and it looks very dry (0.7" now). So either we're going to snap to at least normal precipitation over the next 8 months (since September looks dry), or we're going break our record for dryness in a year. My guess is we snap back hard to wetness. To get to actual normal totals for a year - 8.67" for the past 100 years - we'd need basically 2x normal rain/snow for Oct-May when we average ~0.5" liquid equivalent per month. The mechanics of that snap back are interesting to think about, especially since this El Nino looks like it will be ~ongoing decline until it collapses as early as late Oct-late Dec. Outside of the SW, I would say the NE US tends to snap back to dryness after very wet Summers. Look at the wettest Summers in Boston - the El Nino blend is 1976, 1982, 1986, 2006, 2009, 2019. 1 1955 24.89 0 2 2023 20.33 0 3 1959 19.68 0 4 2021 19.64 0 - 1982 19.64 0 6 1938 19.07 0 7 1998 17.42 0 8 2006 16.87 0 9 1931 16.03 0 10 2013 15.95 0 11 1986 15.02 0 12 1946 14.90 0 13 2011 14.54 0 14 2019 14.44 0 15 1985 14.12 0 16 2000 14.03 0 17 2008 13.93 0 18 1989 13.85 0 19 2009 13.36 0 20 1976 12.87 0

Among the years I posted as hottest Chicago Septembers, the 1963-64 cold season is crazy for how the temperature profile played out in winter. For records back to 1892, February 1964 is the "least average" month on record in Albuquerque. The high is legitimately 13 degrees below average. I don't think any other month since 1892 is even more than 10/11 above/below average. The Oct-May highs locally on a monthly basis are pretty cleanly +/-3F for standard deviations. So that year is a really interesting exception, likely in part due to the volcanic influence and/or AMO shift that was ongoing.

September looks fairly close to my tentative analogs on the Canadian. I have no faith in the winter outcomes on the models yet especially at the surface. The heat core is stronger and displaced somewhat Southeast, but it's close. Here are the warmest Septembers in Chicago btw, El Nino only - since you have a +8 to +9 forecast on the Canadian. Some pretty severe winters for me in there, along with a few duds. 1939, 1941, 1963, 2015, 2018, 2019

I mean...why would it behave like a Super Nino? Whatever index you use, traditional, MEI, SOI, SSTs, etc, it's not reached anywhere near super strength. I've been expecting a low 28C peak sometime around 10/1-11/30 for a while. We don't really seem like we're going to spend much time, if any, above 28.5C, if you're talking about months from Oct-Feb. The Super Ninos were near 29.0C in recent cases by ~9/1. The 60-year (1951-2010) older/colder August average in Nino 3.4 is 26.65C - so we're at most +1.5C. The more recent 30 year period averaged 0.2C warmer. It's not really a "strong" event yet. 02AUG2023 24.7 3.4 27.1 1.8 28.1 1.1 29.5 0.8 09AUG2023 24.4 3.3 27.0 1.8 28.1 1.2 29.6 0.9 16AUG2023 24.3 3.3 27.1 2.0 28.1 1.3 29.6 0.9 23AUG2023 23.9 3.1 27.2 2.2 28.3 1.5 29.8 1.1 This event is in the low 28s right now, likely 28.25C or so for August. I've bolded August / September. For the moment, we're actually more like 1987 than the super events. 1982-83 took off much later than 1997-98 and 2015-16. This event may be more like 1982. 2023 25.83 26.29 27.18 27.96 28.40 28.57 28.30 -99.99 -99.99 -99.99 -99.99 -99.99 2015 27.05 27.17 27.75 28.52 28.85 28.90 28.75 28.79 28.93 29.08 29.42 29.26 1997 26.01 26.38 27.04 27.98 28.58 28.82 28.86 28.75 28.85 29.08 29.12 28.89 1982 26.67 26.59 27.41 28.03 28.39 28.26 27.66 27.58 28.21 28.71 28.62 28.80 1972 25.62 26.30 27.09 27.89 28.32 28.18 28.14 27.95 27.95 28.26 28.61 28.69 1965 25.66 26.19 26.94 27.38 27.99 28.09 27.90 27.97 28.01 28.17 28.12 27.96 1987 27.68 27.88 28.27 28.39 28.56 28.65 28.59 28.42 28.36 27.96 27.77 27.54

By the way, since we're in high solar conditions now, it's worth noting that there is some evidence in the research of the sun modifying the severity of MJO pulses via...something. Solar wind? UV radiation? A guy on here in the SE forums used to talk about coronal mass ejections as the likely mechanism. This is from an interesting paper I read awhile ago - https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2018JD028939 One stupid sanity check I like to do is just look at past years in multiples in 11. You almost always find one near perfect match when ENSO aligns. Same thing tends to happen at intervals of 30, on the closest timed ENSO match. 2023, 2012, 2001, 1990, 1979, 1968, 1957, 1946, 1935. Just from that list, 2012 is still one of the top SST matches globally (many severe heat waves, derechos, Gulf hurricanes, etc and the oceans were warm in Summer, Nino zones included). 1979 had notorious, record heat in the SW following a severely cold winter for most of the US, so fairly similar. 1968 has the El Nino hurricane hitting FL running SW to NE. A lot of you guys like 1957 too. On the 30-year scale, you have 1993, 1963, 1933. Just from those, 1963 is a decent match. That's a very severe winter in a lot of ways though. Several of those periods at the 11-year intervals followed recent winters of notorious cold waves in Texas BTW (Feb 2011, Dec 1989, and so on).

Michael (2018) & Gladys (1968) in developing El Nino both hit the NW coast of Florida running SW->NE in October. It's interesting seeing the hurricane now. Suspect we'll see another burst of Gulf activity in mid-October before the season dies off. Several of the older El Ninos, like 1951 and 1972 did see Nino 4 get to 29.0C+ readings for a few months mid-year. CPC generally has the Nino zones warming about 0.1F per decade. That's part of why I've been looking at those years. If you remove 0.5C everywhere in the tropics in 2023 those years are similar to now spatially. Both -PDO setups too. By the way - all the years with developing Ninos that had -PDO readings through Summer? Those that flipped positive for the upcoming Oct-May, flipped by the end of August.

Now that the August heat wave centered on Texas is baked in, we've settled back into a very similar national temperature profile as in June. Heat is most severe in the middle of the US, and cool pockets exist by the coasts. This is one of my theories for the Fall-Spring, when the subsurface warms. Unfortunately, I don't think it is going to be the dominant pattern for the cold season. It's been a while, but I can remember patterns where the jet stream does this in the winter for long stretches. I don't think its crazy to expect the entrenched Midwest/Plains dry spot to persist via a high over the Midwest. Eventually we'll get a May 2015 / 1957 and that'll destroy it, but may be late Spring before it comes. At some point I need to go back and see if I can find that dry spot in a developing El Nino.

This is the real regression I use for anyone who cares - rather than the dumbed down version. B4 is ONI in DJF, B5 is annualized sunspots in July-June, and B6 is ONI in DJF in the prior year. For the past 29 El Ninos, that formula is accurate +/-1.7F in 26 of 29 El Ninos. ABQ El Nino DJF High = (2.899*B4^2)-(0.0161*B4*B5)+(1.566*B4*B6)+(0.0001046175*B5^2)-(0.017933*B5*B6)-(0.30338*B6^2)-(8.5467*B4)+(0.006026*B5)+(0.9541*B6)+(54.495) El Nino ONI DJF Sun Jul-J ONIp DJF Tmax Obs Tmax Proj Error Error 48.9 1939 1.0 125.9 -1.0 49.8 48.7 1.10 0.90 1940 1.9 94.4 1.0 49.8 49.3 0.50 0.90 1941 1.1 76.5 1.9 48.9 49.7 0.83 0.03 1945 0.8 95.8 -0.5 47.8 49.5 1.67 1.07 1951 0.5 62.8 -0.8 50.0 50.6 0.58 1.07 1953 0.8 9.5 0.4 50.7 50.2 0.53 1.83 1957 1.8 281.6 -0.2 50.5 50.6 0.13 1.57 1958 0.6 255.4 1.8 50.4 50.5 0.10 1.50 1963 1.1 29.1 -0.4 43.6 47.4 3.83 5.33 1965 1.4 37.1 -0.6 44.4 46.1 1.70 4.50 1968 1.1 155.7 -0.6 48.4 49.3 0.87 0.47 1969 0.5 148.6 1.1 52.0 51.6 0.43 3.13 1972 1.8 75.4 -0.7 45.2 45.5 0.27 3.67 1976 0.7 23.2 -1.6 48.1 46.5 1.60 0.80 1977 0.7 84.1 0.7 50.5 50.5 0.00 1.60 1982 2.2 129.2 -0.1 47.9 47.5 0.43 0.97 1986 1.2 19.1 -0.5 46.7 46.9 0.15 2.20 1987 0.8 65.3 1.2 50.0 50.3 0.33 1.07 1991 1.7 177.8 0.4 48.0 48.0 0.02 0.90 1994 1.0 36.9 0.1 54.4 48.8 5.57 5.47 1997 2.2 54.9 -0.5 47.1 46.6 0.50 1.80 2002 0.9 131.0 -0.1 50.7 49.8 0.90 1.80 2004 0.6 55.3 0.4 50.2 50.8 0.63 1.27 2006 0.7 20.1 -0.8 46.6 48.3 1.67 2.27 2009 1.5 13.2 -0.8 46.6 45.3 1.27 2.33 2014 0.6 90.7 -0.4 51.4 50.8 0.63 2.53 2015 2.5 55.8 0.6 51.4 51.9 0.50 2.50 2018 0.8 5.5 -0.9 48.2 47.3 0.90 0.70 2019 0.5 2.1 0.8 49.8 52.1 2.30 0.90

El Nino winters locally are pretty predictable for highs using a regression incorporating: - Nino 3.4 for winter - Nino 3.4 for prior winter - Solar conditions The ideal case is a strong El Nino following a strong La Nina with low solar. Generally speaking the scale is this: Weak El Nino ------------> Super Warm El Nino (current winter) Super Warm El Nino ------------> Super Cold La Nina (prior winter) Solar Maximum -------------> Solar Minimum (July-June annualized) The top scale I think of as 26.5C to 28.5C, where 28.5C = 10, and 26.5C = 0. (1 point = 0.2C) Middle scale is 24.5C - 28.5C where 24.5C = 10, and 28.5C = 0 (1 point = 0.4C) Solar is essentially 0-300 sunspots, where 0 = 10, and 300 = 0 (1 point = 30 sunspots) A year like 2018-19 was strongly supported to be somewhat cold: Nino 3.4 (4), Nino 3.4 prior (7), Solar (10) - a 7/10. This year, I get something like this: Nino 3.4 (~7.5), Nino 4 prior (6.5), Solar (4) - a 6/10, maybe 7 if Nino 3.4 goes up. A particularly severe winter would be 2009-10 locally: Nino 3.4 (8), Nino 3.4 prior (7), Solar (10) - 8/10 Very roughly, each average score above/below 5 corresponds to -1 / +1 against long-term averages. So I expect a -1F type winter here, while 2018-19 was more of a -2F winter against 1991-2020, while 2009-10 was a -3F winter.

You have to be careful with the solar stuff. The cycles are not always 11 years. Historical range from min to min or max to max is 9-13 years. So a year that looks like it is still climbing or falling can be the top/bottom of the cycle. The prior min was centered on February 2019, so we may already be at the peak (Feb 2024 would be +5 years from the min). We've been seeing the tendency reversal in temperatures I speculated on earlier. The SW US heat wave in July coincided with a record drop in subsurface heat for a warm ENSO event. Now the subsurface is warming, and it is cooling off quickly locally. We've had several cool days this month after none at all for six weeks.

The composite doesn't have ridging for the east coast. At 500 mb it's a high over 50N / 70W and a low in the Gulf of Alaska at 45N and 140W. But I don't really think the upper level pattern in aggregate is going to matter very much if it is as volatile this winter as I expect week to week or month to month. The snow follows the pressure tendency almost exactly.

I may update this later. But I'm actually most confident in the snow aspect of the coming cold season. The red numbers are % of the 1961-2020 Oct-May snow average for a spot, and below average. If you see a +Blue% that is the % above the 60-year average you should finish (i.e. +15%, if average is 20 inches = 23"). The blue numbers that say 100% (Grand Junction as an example) without + are forecast to be exactly average. I have the analogs behind this map, but I don't have a weighting I like yet, so not posting them for now.

Looking back, May-July was a pretty close match to 1951, 1972, 1982, 1991, 1997, 2009 for precipitation trends nationally. I've fudged the scale by 15% to account for the extra moisture from the volcano. That blend is actually pretty decent for both temps and precipitation, especially if you get cute with the weighting. I'll wait until September to be sure, but some combination of those years, with anti-1993 looks like a good bet for the winter. They're generally high solar El Nino years following cold ENSO, with the QBO close enough, and a couple of the -PDO / Volcanic El Ninos in there.

Here is the Canadian for winter on the Aug 1 2022 run. There were low heights over the Northern US, and high heights almost all of the US, West included. The actual pattern was east / west for the split, not north / south. The models have some skill on like 11/30 for December - I use them for that. But beyond that, they're worthless for localized / non-global patterns. Even for something like water temperatures, the forecasts early in the thread from Feb-Mar had Nino 1.2 at like +2 right now, and it's more like +3. The only thing SSTs can do is go up or down, but even that's pretty far off at about the same lead time we have currently from winter. The 2022-23 winter was 25.96C in Nino 3.4 for Dec-Feb. The way I start my forecasts is just to look at years following similar winters that match the weather. Then roll forward. The similar winter years that turn to El Ninos are 1957-58, 1963-64, 1968-69, 1972-73, 1986-87, 1997-98, 2006-07, 2009-10. They get to 27.93C in winter on average. It's not exact...but ballpark? The colder it gets, the stronger the correlation I find to year over year trends for US temps. You guys get one cold month in the NE with that. Pretty good winter for the rest of the US though. You do have to warm up / shove the composite NW. The composite below - it's just too old / too far SE with the Atlantic so much colder than now.

Do we really think the models have any idea what will happen in the winter yet? August was supposed to be dry in the SW - a lot of places in the driest deserts are about to get locally 3-10 years of rain in a few days. You have record levels of precipitation available from Tonga and ocean heat globally. I really don't get the logic in these threads anymore. You guys all thought last year would be an East based La Nina. That was what you wanted, since it favors a cold East so you didn't look at forcing. Now this year, everything looks like an East-based El Nino that will eventually collapse toward a basin wide or Modoki look sometime in Feb-May. That's dis-favorable, so you all go to forcing as the crutch. I don't think it's a lock that this event transitions quickly enough to get severe cold and snow in the East. The looks that resemble Jan-Mar 2010 will probably intermittently occur in late January to early March. Is it going to matter? The entire northern half of the continent is going to be flooded with very warm (50s?) air from late Nov to late January. We're still paralleling 1982 broadly in three month periods. The Norman, Paul, and especially Olivia East Pacific hurricanes brought unusual heavy rain to Baja / US California. Summer 1982 was very hot centered on the TX/MX border, with most of the rest of the US seasonal to cool. You don't have this shit with the dying hurricanes bringing heavy rain into the SW US in the Modoki El Ninos. Its years like 1982, 1997, 2015 that have it.

I'm starting to work on my winter outlook. Locally, a lot of the driest Summers come before fluky heavy snow or major cold events in October-November. These are the driest "monsoons" locally (i.e. 6/15-9/30) since 1931 - excluding 2023. 1947, 1953, 1976, 1979, 1983, 2000, 2016, 2019, 2020 all had at least some fall snow. 1947, 1953, 2016, 2019, 2020 all had record snow/rain events, with 1976, 1983, 2000, 2020 all seeing major cold snaps (highs in the 30s Nov 1983, lows in the teens in October 2020 with record snow to Mexico, record cold in September 2020 as well, and then the major cold waves of November 2000 and 1976, including a low of -7F in Nov 1976). Additionally, 1960, 1989, 2003, 2011 are very wet in October. Pretty decent odds we'll finish in the bottom 20 for the monsoon rain. A lot of these years actually have pretty powerful Blue Norther events as well. 2 2003-09-30 1.46 0 3 1953-09-30 1.53 0 4 2011-09-30 1.72 0 5 1960-09-30 1.81 0 6 1948-09-30 1.88 0 7 1962-09-30 2.14 0 8 1956-09-30 2.28 0 9 1989-09-30 2.30 0 10 2000-09-30 2.31 0 11 2020-09-30 2.62 0 12 1947-09-30 2.73 0 13 1979-09-30 2.77 0 14 2019-09-30 2.87 0 15 1954-09-30 2.88 0 16 1983-09-30 2.94 0 17 2016-09-30 3.09 0 18 1976-09-30 3.10 0 19 1951-09-30 3.12 0 - 1950-09-30 3.12 0

I don't find much about the US patterns this Summer to be too inconsistent with a developing El Nino. Warmth in Nino 3.4 above a certain point weakens and/or delays monsoon progression and is a weak hot signal for TX/NM. We're the most sensitive/responsive place in the US to ENSO in a statistical sense. We're heading into an El Nino with two dominant patterns. When the subsurface cools, the Midwest will be a bit cool, with heat elsewhere, particularly in the SW US and New England. June and August, with subsurface warming/without subsurface cooling, are colder West/East to about the Continental Divide and Mississippi River, with TX and the Plains warmer. As the cold air seasonally pushes down against the subtropical ridges, that hot area should retreat to the Mexican plateau and the US will be mostly cold. How often is the subsurface going to warm in the winter though? That's the question. Probably not more than one big push. The subsurface warming has been the dominant pattern since last Fall, and has corresponded with persistently intense periods of cold and snow in the West, notably November 2022 and March 2023. We've had over half a year of warming of the subsurface already since last Fall. It can't continue for much longer. I'm very much in the warm camp for the winter. But you should have pretty severe cold pushes when the subsurface does warm. That's the only reason I've been toying with including 2009-10 at low weight.

PDO was still near record negative readings for July too: -1.86 https://oceanview.pfeg.noaa.gov/erddap/tabledap/cciea_OC_PDO.htmlTable?time,PDO Some of the +IOD matches are also good QBO matches (1972, 2019) by the way, and a couple have negative / neutral PDO (1972, 2019 setups for the cold season.

The Australians have the Indian Ocean Dipole going solidly positive. The +IOD (cold by Indonesia, warm in the Indian Ocean), is not forecast to be crazy, but it is positive looking. It tends to peak in Fall too. The El Nino with +IOD years are something like 1963-64, 1972-73, 1982-83, 1994-95, 1997-98, 2006-07, 2015-16, 2019-20. If we're "driving the same road" as those years, you'd expect to see some familiar landmarks. Unusual heat wave like Mexico had in June 1982: Check Very warm waters off Peru like 1997? Check Record all-time daily and monthly Summer heat in the Southwest like in June 1994? Check Horrible global heat waves like in 2015? Check El Nino following a cold Western winter in a La Nina like in 1972? Check 2006 is the worst match of the bunch - weak El Nino, cold Summer SW US, strong monsoon, etc. But 1963 was quite hot in July as well.

The new MEI looks at 30N-30S from 70W to 100E. So you're including the -PDO and IOD in the calculation essentially as anti +ENSO signals. The older MEI btw is a near identical match to years like 2003, 1953, and 1979 that had notorious heat waves in developing El Nino / near-El Nino years. The MEI is like anything else, it tells you recent conditions. So Jun-Jul 2012 was apparently a stronger El Nino than Jun-July 2009. Another year with major heat waves anyway. 1986-87 is a simple example of an MEI in Jun-July that went from +0.4 but eventually got to +2.1 in 1987. If you look at actual maps, we've had the subtropical and northern stream jet over NM simultaneously in August for a few moments. That's not exactly a great indicator that the processes that might juice up the subtropical jet...like an El Nino are weak. This was a discussion from the local NWS a few days ago. I don't really recall seeing the subtropical jet over me outside of Oct-May, which is the cold season here. .SHORT TERM... (Today through Tuesday) Issued at 144 AM MDT Mon Aug 7 2023 It`s not often the polar and subtropical jet streams phase with one another so close to northern NM during early August. At any rate, while low-level Gulf moisture seeps its way westward into the middle and lower RGV behind a backdoor front, a westerly wind speed max in the mid and upper levels of the atmosphere, will help trigger scattered showers and thunderstorms for all but the northern quarter of the state this afternoon into early evening. These two meteorological features will combine with daytime heating to generate mainly scattered late morning to afternoon showers and thunderstorms over much of central NM

The major cool-off / wetter period we're seeing now in New Mexico, back to seasonal conditions, is consistent with the subsurface flat-lining. Once we get a burst in subsurface temps, it should get very cold pretty quickly. But I don't really expect the flat subsurface period to end for a bit. I know everyone likes to talk about how warm the Indian Ocean warm pool is v. the ENSO regions...but surely the incredible heat in the Gulf of Mexico matters too? There have been 100F observed waters near Florida this Summer. Indian Ocean is nowhere near that warm. Small places off Western Mexico are also super warm.

The actual 2023 US temperature profile looks a lot like 1991 and 1982 in the sequential three month "seasons" since 1/1. No one has really noticed because the MJO cycle has been different all year. So the months individually are not great matches. But seasonally, Jan-Mar, Feb-Apr, Mar-May, etc are close to 2023. Especially if you add a degree or so for 1982. The research I've seen on volcanism suggests that the ITCZ moves north/south of normal ENSO positions in response to major tropical eruptions. So it makes sense that you have essentially half of the "correct" rainfall response at the equator in July. I would say 2018 had half the response as well - but in the opposite way. Dry by Indonesia, no wet signal to the east. Essentially, the "wetness" that is moved off the equator in the older strong events is now at the equator - that's been my working theory. The research is that +aerosol net eruptions push the wetness north - so with Tonga I've assumed the opposite. For reference, here is 1972-73, and roughly what I expect for winter - The CFS moves the wettest area in the tropics east through Feb-Apr. I think it's just a bit slow - what it has for Jan-Mar is very similar to what I just showed. The Canadian has the 2009-10 look, of 175W as the center-point for DJF instead of 160W.

To be honest, there isn't much support for the Hadley Circulation definitively expanding from Global Warming either. I don't really care what the Tip guy says, IPCC says it's still behaving within natural variation in the Northern Hemisphere. Go look into the section for the Hadley Cell. It's page 37 at the bottom. The Hadley and Walker cells really seem to behave fairly independently, and honestly the southern portion is probably responding more violently to the QBO because of the hole in the Ozone layer. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_Chapter03.pdf The human-induced change has not yet clearly emerged out of the internal variability range in the Northern Hemisphere (Quan et al., 2018; Grise et al., 2019), whereas the trend in the annual-mean Southern Hemisphere edge is outside the 5th–95th percentile range of internal variability in CMIP6 in three out of the four reanalyses (Figure 3.16b). For the Southern Hemisphere summer when the simulated human influence is strongest, the 1981–2000 trend in three out of the four reanalyses falls outside the 5th–95th percentile range of internal variability (Figure 3.16c; L. Tao et al., 2016; Grise et al., 2018, 2019). So much of the discussion in here is idiotic. It doesn't matter if the Hadley Cell is wobbling, contracting, expanding, moving east/west and impacting ENSO development. The vast majority of the forum is outside the rising air / sinking air placement of the circulation, whether it's advanced north/south/east/west by a few tenths of a degree. IPCC has it moving 0.1-0.3 degrees per decade on the net. That's not a big deal for someone at 42N. Your weather in the East is determined not by ENSO strength but by placement, as that links to the PDO and other Pacific patterns that make you warm or cold. RONI is just another toy for estimating strength using poorly defined estimates for how the other oceans should be behaving in the tropics.

I keep trying to tell you this but you seem to miss out: ENSO was never predictive for temperatures or precipitation in your region. The correlations for RONI are even worse. Go look - I dare you. We both know you won't.

The 'RONI' stuff you guys are talking about looks like it is pretty useless for seasonal forecasting. The correlations to anything you'd want to forecast for Fall/Winter/Spring are lower than the SST figures. In other words, PNA, WPO/EPO, PDO, temperatures, whatever - it all corresponds more cleanly to actual temperatures and especially changes in temperatures. The other more basic issue with using RONI is that CPC has no actual idea how warm the tropics are in a centered sense in the current 30-year period....because only half the period has happened. They're essentially guessing how warm the tropics are outside 120-170W, 5N-5S should be in La Nina v. an El Nino for 2011-2040 and then subtracting out the current warmth/coolness in the tropics against that imagined baseline. I think it's generally understood that the Indian Ocean at low latitudes warms faster than the others. So for me I just to try carefully match up the Indian Ocean tendency with the Pacific. You need the entire circumference of the tropical oceans to be ballpark in terms of tendencies to have a shot at a decent seasonal forecast.