George001

Yeah ignoring the PDO was a mistake, but I’m going to disagree with you on the MEI. All the MEI was saying was that the La Niña was going to act like a stronger Nina than ONI would imply. That is bad for the mid Atlantic, but NYC north it’s really not. Strong Ninas are fine up here. If you use MEI, the 2010-2011 was the strongest La Niña on record. La Nina’s, especially stronger ones are more dependent on North Atlantic blocking (polar region). Historically strong Nina with a -NAO has been one of the most favorable winter patterns in New England (behind weak nino with a raging +PDO). However, strong ninas with a +NAO are often REALLY bad (see the entire 2011-2012 winter, last year during Jan and Feb). In a nino (non super), +NAO isn’t really a death sentence and can actually be a really good pattern for New England if combined with a +PDO. In a stronger Nino like this one, you really want a +PDO if looking for big snows in the east. El Nino -PDO combo has historically been quite unfavorable for east coast snow (Raindance has some good posts about this). The only ENSO state that really is a death sentence for a cold snowy winter up here is super nino. This winter looks like it has a good chance at having both a -PDO and a super nino, which is why I agree with you about this winter being a dud for my area. I think in general there is this big “Nina bad, Nino good” sentiment for east coast winters which is not necessarily true.

This unironically is a good thing to keep in mind for the winter.

I don’t know about that, strong la Nina patterns aren’t necessarily bad in New England. 2007-2008 was pretty good in Boston, and 2010-2011 had the lowest MEI on record and a raging -PDO. The summer of 2010 had an MEI of -2.5 (super).

Another couple ticks and there’s a low over my noggin. It’s a little more west than I thought, but there’s no reason to panic and and overreact. It’s just a low, it’s really not a big deal. We get lows plowing inland all the time. What’s so special about this storm? It’s just a run of the mill windy rainstorm, nothing we aren’t used to in New England.

Yeah still worth watching but looking like a near miss is the most likely outcome. The low is very strong, just too far offshore to be anything more than a typical rainstorm.

Aren’t La Ninas decent in New England and only really bad in the mid Atlantic? Even strong ninas aren’t that bad in Boston. We actually do better in strong ninas than strong and super ninos snowfall wise.

That same seasonal guidance is forecasting a super nino peaking in November/December. If the nino ends up at like +1.6 or something (I highly doubt that based on the latest weeklies already being up to +1.6) I would be more inclined to buy it, but a +2.1 peak? I’m not buying that we have a winter anywhere that cold and snowy during a super nino.

He kept using 95-96 and 10-11 as his analogs last year and wouldn’t stop insisting that it was about to get very cold and snowy week after week from November through March. It was like he was living in an alternative universe. He was God awful last winter, terrible Yeah those analogs were horrible. 2011-2012 would have been a better analog to use, moderate modoki nina coming off another nina. For La Niñas they are the most favorable immediately after an El Niño, since sometimes you will have the juiced STJ still active and the typical Nina active northern branch. Both 95-96 and 10-11 were ninas immediately following an El Niño. I’m with you on this winter not being great, but I like the look of next winter (decent probability of a La Niña after a super nino this winter).

Yeah, he likes warmer weather like Torch Tiger. I don’t have a problem with it this year though since he has been for the most part right about how this El Niño would develop so far, and his aggressive forecasts do have model support. If he’s getting excited about a super Nina next year and is saying it will lead to a warm snowless winter, I’ll have more of a problem with it because that isn’t really supported by data.

Yeah when it’s not agreeing with its own ensembles combined with its amped bias it makes sense to go with the less aggressive guidance.

Sometimes, just going with climo is the way to go. Just like how we should be skeptical of the models showing a 10 day blizzard in November, we should be skeptical of any guidance that shows a 10 day cat 2-hurricane landfalling in SNE. Climo doesn’t support that, and when it comes down to climo vs model forecasts, 99/100 times climo wins out.

That’s insane there is nothing to support this being anything close to Sandy. Even the guidance that is the closest just gives us a lot of rain, not a direct hit landfall.

This is starting to get interesting. I haven’t really checked the models much over the past couple of days, but since I last time I looked the low location is more west than it was last time I looked. I don’t think a SNE landfall is likely, but the risk of the storm getting close enough to give us a lot of rain is increasing.

Makes sense, they tend to do better in strong and super ninos. If the mid Atlantic is going to get theirs, let’s hope for something similar to 02-03 where both New England and the mid Atlantic has a big winter instead of 09-10 or 15-16 where New England gets screwed.

You think it will be an above average snow winter for New England instead of the mid Atlantic?

Yes guidance cooled a bit, but most guidance is still showing a super nino. I am sticking to my call for a 2.3 ONI (super) peak in OND.

Yeah, makes sense to take the models with a grain of salt right now. It’s still 10 days away and climatology says a major hurricane landfalling in New England is unlikely especially during a strong El Niño. If it’s still there by day 5 then I’ll be interested.

I hated 18-19 even though it wasn’t terrible in my area snow wise. The storm track was way north pretty much the entire winter and when we finally got a big storm in March it melted in a couple of days. After last years disaster all Im hoping for is one big storm, a few little ones (enough to get us to average snow) and enough cold to give us a solid month of snowcover this year. Doesn’t need to be huge, just an average New England winter (which will feel great after getting nothing last year).

Now this is something we can work with. Big difference between +0.5-+1.0 DJF and a +5 blowtorch. It also matters how you get to those anomalies. Say winter A is +10 Dec, -2 Jan, -2 Feb, and winter B is -2 Dec, +3 Jan, +5 Feb. Both winters A and B are average precipitation. Despite both winter A and winter B being +2 DJF, I would expect winter A to produce as much snow as 3 winter Bs. The way I see it, whether you are +5 or +10 you are getting skunked. I would rather punt a month with marginal climo (Dec) than peak climo (Feb). And that’s not even including March (which is snowier than Dec). This Euro run verbatim is a less extreme version of winter A (much cooler in Dec but still a torch, probably a bit warmer Jan and Feb but still good).

I’d take a 2017-2018 type winter and run. It had some really mild stretches, averaged AN but overall but was very snowy winter with 2 blizzards. March 2018 was incredible. I had never seen so much snow in March like that before. There was about 30 inches of heavy wet snow (from 2 back to back storms) piled up, and the snowpack lasted nearly the entire month despite us missing out on the next couple of storms. That more than made up for the mild temps the previous month.

I just dug up the exact numbers instead of eyeballing it, and my previous post was wrong. The dynamical guidance had a mean of +1.3 for JJA, and the actual mean was +1.1. I see why you were saying I was incorrect about the dynamical guidance (since it has been too aggressive the past couple months). It appears like you already did this, but I went back to June and looked at what the JJA forecast was, and it forecasted a mean of +1.12! That’s pretty much dead on. I still think it’s interesting though that the dynamical guidance keeps upping the strength despite having been too aggressive the past couple months.

Yeah, I didn’t have a problem with that comment. I was actually kind of poking fun at myself a bit, since I don’t really understand the meteorology behind what drives ENSO I’m just deferring to Paul Roundy since he does. I don’t particularly care about trying to sound smart or pretend to be the smartest person in the room, if I did I wouldn’t post. Im more concerned with tracking the event and learning more about enso development.

Even with the Euro backing off a bit the low end of the envelope is what, 1.8-1.9? I would still favor a super nino as the most likely outcome, and even if we are wrong I would still say Paul Roundy had the right idea. He said in March “it’s going to be a big one, it will build from east to west”. If we get a +1.9 nino that built from east to west, that means we still got a big one that moved from east to west.

I am mostly referring to the statistical guidance, there has been a large gap between the statistical and dynamical guidance and according to the latest data the OBS have been running significantly warmer than the statistical guidance mean and slightly warmer than the dynamical guidance mean. For some reason I can’t post pictures here so I’ll just post the source I used. Snowman19 was talking about how the models have been underestimating the +IOD, which could potentially enhance the development of the El Niño even without a big MJO wave. I am also skeptical of the MJO forecasts, they have been awful in the winter, changing wildly every update. We will see though. I’m mostly going by history (the history of stronger ninos developing after multi year ninos, what ninos were a similar strength to this one now and how did those develop) what the El Niño looks like right now, and the dynamical model prorjections. I am ignoring the statistical guidance because it has been underestimating the strength of the nino, shown by the IRI charts showing trendline of the the OBS over the past 22 months compared to the various dynamical and statistical guidance. You did bring up some good points that I didn’t really consider, so I’ll look into those. I am more of a stats guy with fairly large gaps in my understanding of the actual meteorology, so I am open to being corrected if I get something wrong about the actual processes that drive ENSO. That is very much a work in progress for me haha https://iri.columbia.edu/our-expertise/climate/forecasts/enso/current/?enso_tab=enso-sst_table#

I’m mostly going by the history of how this El Niño has been developing more than MJO forecasts. A lot of the conventional tools (MJO wave, -PDO, etc) are supposed to be working against El Niño development, but the strengthening has been in line with the more aggressive end of the envelope despite that. The subsurface is starting to warm up rapidly, and Paul Roundy told me that all that warmth in the eastern regions is going to continue building west. He has been right about how this El Niño would develop since early spring, and I don’t see why that will stop.