csnavywx

Great little storm. Nice dendrites for most of it. Monday's system is a miss to the south, but might give some crumbs to the NC and SE VA crowd. Hopefully we get a decent clipper track or the like next week.

Just preconditioning the next drop, barring steady AMOC weakening. I expect noise from the usual suspects to get louder right up until the point that they (once again) go silent. Difference this go-around is that the cave-out is likely to come from the Atlantic front this time around since most of the MYI losses that could happen on the Pacific front already have. The vicious feedback of shoaling AW layer --> sensible+latent heat flux to trop --> stronger Ural/Scand. ridging --> PV disruption --> strengthening meridional transport --> shoaling AW layer has a lot further to go if CMIP6 is onto something. And winter warming is necessary to precondition the next drop anyways.

First couple of targets to track are this Friday (marginal, but halfway decent track) and next Mon/Tues (trailing wave needs to dig a bit more to develop a full blown slider, but there's a shot there with enough cold air already in place.

Getting pretty excited about this season, tbh. Pretty bullish start upstream and even though today is just cold rain, it's good to see a more southern coastal track light up so early on. Leaning towards '13/'14 and '95/'96 for analogues atm. Current setup is weak -ENSO/strong (collapsing) -IOD, -AO/-NAO and -WPO favored, a rare early SSW and PV placement favored over the NH side of the hemisphere. Still digging around doing some research, but am leaning quite bullish. Seasonal models have been screaming a tight gradient with plenty of cold air available to produce snow *for months* now, and so far it's panning out. Just need to keep the pedal to the metal on the cold and the SE ridge on the weak side.

Thanks, been looking for failure modes. If this strong -IOD collapses in the next 1-2 mo and we end up with this kind of DJF pattern in the NPac, both of those are typically Nino harbingers:

Yeah, I believe it for the WPac. It's been in a counter-trend to the Atlantic. Probably reverses as aerosols get progressively cleaned up. ATL itself has some competing factors, namely lapse rate/stability issues and a tendency for the ITCZ to lurch northward with asymmetric hemispheric warming (a la Broecker et. al '17). That'll put more waves over the cooler/more stable Canary current for the MDR track. Then there's the potential issue of MJO and ENSO amplification (+ and -). To me it seems that more volatility is an easier call than a continuance of the upward ATL trend.

There was a very unusual WWB in the far EPac in March '23 that was very strong. That started Costero conditions pretty early and may have helped contribute to an earlier response (a la 1877-78). Aerosol loading dropouts after '20 didn't help either -- unmasked pretty quickly after the end of the triple-dip Nina. I still expect some retracement from here through March/April, but if we don't get meaningful drops, that in itself will be pretty telling.

Another paper that might become relevant this coming year: https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo760

I would imagine we get more of a downward "push" from the incoming -IOD and -ENSO episode helping amplify each other over the next 3-6 months. As mentioned in the ENSO thread last week, seasonal climate models are hinting at a favorable NPac pattern for the development of Nino the following year. Source: https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/16/16/1520-0442_2003_016_2668_tsfmit_2.0.co_2.xml

The Southwest Monsoon has been on fire this year with stronger than usual upwelling in the Arabian Sea. Combined with recent trades, we actually have a nice incipient -IOD pattern setting up, which should help boost our Nina into the winter months. This winter looking interesting from the standpoint of the Pacific pattern on the seasonals: Looks encouraging for increased cross-polar flow, PV favoring our hemisphere and a typical Nina gradient-pattern. This MSLP pattern is also pretty favorable for a follow-on reduction of the trades, which may line up nicely when the developing -IOD terminates: https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/16/16/1520-0442_2003_016_2668_tsfmit_2.0.co_2.xml

Yep. Pretty unremarkable melt season weather-wise. Area and volume significantly lower, but not exceptional or anything. Beaufort took quite a long time to melt out this year, closer to 2013's melt season, and there's still an intact arm into the ESS -- whereas the CAB itself is actually record low on area. The easy to melt stuff is long gone and a transition towards Atlantic-side dominance may yet take some more time.

A more in depth look at the issue available here (as a review of the book "The Price is Wrong"): https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=14174&context=mlr The book itself is a good read.

Full disclosure as I'm long FSLR stock and ICLN etf shares as of a couple of months ago, but it's suffered on an important metric that doesn't ever seem to be discussed: profitability. For better or worse live and breathe in a market system, where component cost is only one part of the equation and the considerable firming costs get downplayed (esp. at high penetration, at low pen. they're negligible). There is no OPEC for RE and the oft cited negative power prices are a symptom of high volatility, something that's never good for bottom lines in a commodity space. If you rushed to buy in '21 during the initial wave of optimism without careful consideration of the downsides, you got rinsed for 70%+ of your investment. The recent growth in PV+BESS is encouraging and I think the equity side has been pounded enough that it's a decent buy for LT positions, but we're going to have to spend a lot of cash upgrading the grid to handle this as well and that cost isn't going to be cheap, esp. at today's interest rates. If we're not honest about that up front, then well... the political backlash will be even worse than we've seen so far. I agree this should have been 10 years ago -- I think rebound and network effects along with struggling profitability are going to result in it the transition moving slower than it otherwise could have. It still needs subsidies to fill the gap. Some companies are better than others, ofc.

Yep, it's later than you might think and that's due to high variance. It's even later over the high/central Plains. However, I don't think anybody should take solace in that: https://tamino.wordpress.com/2025/07/06/heat-wave-hotspots/ The fact that we're heading back into an environment where years like the '30s Dust Bowl heat can happen again with much shorter return periods should be a cause for concern. The '30s wasn't without anthropogenic influence, but arguing that the current trajectory isn't that big of a deal because of high past variance is also arguing for high climate sensitivity (at least regionally). We're focusing on the floods this year, but we could just as easily be in a Nina-enhanced drought next year. The higher VPD makes volatility increase over time.

This particular subject was covered in some depth by Mora et. al in 2013: https://cities-today.com/new-study-predicts-when-climate-change-will-irreversibly-hit-your-city/?utm_source=chatgpt.com Transient climate responses and regional effects will ofc hasten or slow the date. Don't mistake large mid-latitude variability and transient responses for anything other than chance. One day the dice will not land as favorably. Note that this map is RCP 8.5 and running CMIP5. We are below that run in terms of CO2 concentrations, but very near it in terms of total radiative forcing (due to a number of factors) and CMIP6 is running pretty close to reality nowadays.