George001

I’m skeptical of a cold Feb too but I’m more optimistic about December and January. I agree about December being a sign of things to come, usually in La Niña winters winter shows its hand early.

Makes sense, -PDO, strengthening GOA cold pool and recent uptick in tropical activity is consistent with a strengthening La Niña background state. It’s strange, with these observations you would expect a much stronger ONI response. Makes me wonder if there is a risk that the ONI plummets way more than expected, like a solidly moderate ONI peak or even close to strong. I’m not expecting that given where the ONI is currently at (sticking to my -0.8 to -1 call), but it is something that crossed my mind as a potential wild card factor for this winter.

It’s interesting how disgusted the mid Atlantic posters are about the thought of a 2007-2008 winter redux. I say bring it on, often when they rain we snow. That’s exactly how it went down that year.

Now this is a great example of why a pattern being “good” or “bad” means a completely different thing depending who who’s posting it. 07-08 in particular had an extremely sharp snowfall gradient. We all live in different areas, so we have different perspectives on what constitutes a good vs bad winter. For me, I live in SNE and I ski so I prefer areas farther north to do well too. Good winter for me, record breaking good for ski areas. So I have zero issues with 07-08 and if I could sign a lifetime contract that guaranteed an 07-08 redux every year, I would do it instantly.

I would prefer 07-08 to 20-21. 07-08 was honestly straight up better than 20-21 for my area, it was snowier and a bit colder. 20-21 the best snows were south and west of SNE. My range for best and worst case scenarios is wider. Best case for my area I would say 2010-2011 redux, worst case 2022-2023 redux. I don’t think either of these scenarios is particularly likely, it would be foolish to forecast such an extreme outcome at this point. But that’s the range of outcomes. I’m thinking average to slightly above average snow for my area at this point, nothing too crazy in either direction.

07-08 was a great winter in New England especially for ski areas. It was decent for SNE too, then sharp cut off south. I would consider that to be a successful winter.

Agree. I’m not putting any stock into what the polar vortex is doing one way or another until December.

Looks like we are going to end up at roughly 140 before the next lull. The average ACE increase from now until the end of hurricane season is roughly 20, so that would put us at around 160 ACE by the end of the hurricane season. We probably will fall short, but I’m starting to think there is a very real shot at going over 180. Likely? No, but stranger things have happened.

Agreed the pattern was not too late at all, it just wasn’t a favorable enough pattern. The epic March 2018 pattern set in just as late but that didn’t matter, it still worked out.

That makes sense. It’s not about the ACE index in itself, it’s about how you get there and the pattern in place that facilitated those high ACE totals. This is where my approach falls short, relying heavily on statistics to try to make sense of things is helpful, but just knowing a correlation exists and how strong it isn’t everything. The WHY is just as if not more important. That’s why I’m glad we have this board, there is so much useful information here that helps amateurs like myself fill those gaps. That has me thinking, although there is nothing out of the ordinary about the raw ACE numbers this year, how we got there is somewhat unusual. The hurricane season peak this year has been quite a bit later than usual, it may or may not mean anything, not too sure but it’s definitely an interesting observation.

I have seen some evidence for a weak to moderate positive correlation between solar and the NAO (both on this board and outside). However, I haven’t seen anything indicating the r^2 value for the correlation between sunspots and NAO is greater than 0.7, though I am open to being proven wrong on that. Regardless, you are correct that sunspots and solar activity aren’t the only +NAO indicators this year. I wasn’t aware of how strong the correlation between geomag and NAO was so I dug into it some. Apparently the correlation between high geomag and +NAO is 0.76 between 1962-1994, which is strong. Thats a good 32 years of data too. That is a great point you brought up about the strong correlation between high geomag activity and +NAO.

Just my opinion but I wouldn’t be worried where you live. Long Island in particular does better in miller bs (common in Nina’s) than even NYC, and you do significantly better than say Philly, DC, etc. Hell, even the whole solar = +NAO thing isn’t a given. I read the papers, all the meteorology shit goes over my head but the one thing I did get out of it is the correlation coefficient is highest in Feb, and even then the correlation is moderate at best. I would lean +NAO, but I just don’t think the correlation is strong enough to justify ignoring certain analogs due to solar. Also, the NAO itself has a weak correlation to temps above a certain latitude (I believe it was an r^2 value of .2 for me and .3 for you, I’ll have to go back and check though). The thing I care about the most is the fall pattern leading up to winter. It is a lot different than the past 2 years as we do not have a parade of storms crashing into the Pacific Northwest. That’s part of the reason I was so bearish last winter (forecasted 20-30 inches of snow in the Boston area, and this turned out to be way too optimistic). We aren’t seeing that this year, and frankly that’s the big concern with strong -PDO Nina patterns. I get the pessimism, I really do. I agree with the pessimism south of say NYC because the farther south you go, the more hostile +NAO patterns are (although far from a guarantee, a positive NAO should be favored over a negative one). Also, snow wise areas farther south are more likely to get screwed in bigger storms during La Nina’s. Those areas do better in a strong STJ El Niño pattern. There are plenty of reasons to be optimistic that have absolutely nothing to do with ACE.

Bluewave is in fact correct about ACE not having much of a relationship to the winter pattern. I dug through some of Raindances old posts, and the correlation coefficient is only around .1 in Boston for ACE and snow in La Nina’s. It is slightly higher for NYC and Philly (roughly .23 in NYC and .21 in Philly), but that is still considered weak.

seasonal ACE is now up to 130 thanks to hurricane Milton going nuclear and deepening significantly more than expected by the models. Milton has already produced nearly 20 ACE, and we may be looking at an ACE of 135-140 once Milton falls apart. On average we see around 20 ACE after today, which means we are looking at potentially a 150+ ACE season despite just a couple weeks ago the hurricane season looking like a complete bust. Things can change fast in weather, something worth keeping in mind during the winter as well if things start slowly.

Damn looks like 120-130 is going to be too conservative. Hurricane Milton deepening significantly more than expected made a big difference, the ACE is already up to 120 now.

I don’t even think the most aggressive hurricane models had the low in the 920s by now

I don’t get it. There is nothing weak about this storm. I am very skeptical of the models that have it landfalling in the 960s given how much they underestimated the strength of the low so far and the initialization errors.

ACE forecasts for the year? The strength of the low in the gulf increased rapidly across all guidance over the past couple of days. I think 125-150. Probably closer to 125, it would take a really big late season storm to get up to 150. Got there in an unusual way, but average to slightly above average ACE overall. I think the increase in strength for that gulf low killed the possibility of a below average ACE season.

Old school meteorology approach. I like it, what is happening RIGHT NOW in the fall matters. What is the storm track? Is it wet or dry? Last winter I saw articles about flooding out west, areas like Seattle were getting hammered. That really raised my alarms that last winter was going to be a rough one. The parade of storms crashing into the Pacific Northwest continued all winter long which was extremely unfavorable for the east coast. The previous winter had the same thing in the fall and I ignored it, and learned the hard way I shouldn’t have. Often the pattern in the fall is a sign of things to some. Storms barreling into the Pacific Northwest is just bad news. This year we aren’t really seeing that. But it has been fairly dry. You mentioned earlier that this may be a dry winter like 2001-2002, a year mentioned as a decent analog several times in this thread.

I don’t buy it either. Interestingly, despite the lack of La Niña on the Euro the 500mb is very much a La Nina pattern. Ridging south of Alaska (usually a trough here in Ninos) and some SE ridging. Probably a fairly active northern branch too. The big question is how far south does the northern branch dip? It’s not a bad pattern for my area verbatim, though definitely playing with fire in regards to that SE ridging especially early winter. Mid Atlantic weenies would like to see more North Atlantic blocking, not really seeing that on the Euro. Although I am skeptical of the lack of La Niña on the Euro, 500mb pattern showed makes sense. I suspect it has the right idea to some extent there.

AGW has definitely progressed since then and is accelerating, but this is a good point. Even in the 2014-2015 winter, the large scale picture was a cold pocket right over the eastern U.S. in a sea of warmth. The climate was warmer in 2014-2015 than the early 2000s, and the climate today is warmer than 2014-2015. I do agree that your area is much better off than areas closer to the coast like mine with the changing climate. Close proximity to the rapidly warming Atlantic Ocean gives us less room for error in terms of storm track, and I suspect that has something to do with December climo worsening faster than other months like March locally. December is the winter month with the warmest average ocean temps, so it makes sense that December is closer to a “tipping point” than March here. You have much more room for error in MI, farther away from the ocean and much colder/snowier climo to begin with.

Looks like things are on track for an official La Niña by ONI (likely high end weak). The development of this Nina has been impressive over the past few weeks.

I know there is a lot of pessimism surrounding this winter, but I am a lot more optimistic than last year. Do I think it will be epic like 2014-2015 or 2010-2011? No I don’t, but the fall pattern so far has been somewhat different than the past 2 years (not seeing a parade of storms crashing into the Pacific Northwest) which I believe does matter. I never liked last winter, but im actually kind of excited about this one.

One thing I am interested in is the prospect of more miller bs this winter. With the active northern branch combined with the very warm SSTs off the coast I think we will see some big storms. The big question is the temp profile, seasonal guidance right now has a very Nina like BN north AN south like 2022-2023, but guidance does have the cold bleeding somewhat farther south than that year. Still too early to really mean much, but it’s worth watching if that holds up by November.

That was a great storm for my area still, but definitely left some on the table because of this. Most of the truly high end events are miller bs for a reason, I would rather have the low bombing out right under us than way south. Regardless, 14-15 inches is still a really good storm, I would gladly take another event like that after the past 2 years.