George001

If we can avoid attenuation in future runs this will become interesting even for areas closer to the coast.

For this to be a legitimate threat for my area, the weakening trend needs to stop now.

971 mb low over the cape with blizzard conditions in Boston

Precip type is still a question, but this looks like it’s going to be a huge storm. I would favor the interior for now but it’s worth watching. 

1 hour ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

The first 3 are Modoki, the latter had an eastern lean. 

What was 2007-2008? That could be another possible analog. 

On 3/18/2024 at 4:10 PM, RUNNAWAYICEBERG said:

Onto winter of 25/26…

Like I said even before the start of this horrible non winter, I’ll take my chances with a strong nina over a strong or super nino any day. Strong nina is far from a death sentence in New England. 

1 hour ago, GaWx said:

 Interesting! With a strong Niña quite possible and even more possible on a RONI basis, I feel your analysis is pertinent. I was just getting ready to post the last times we had a Nino/Niña/Nino progression for any strength of Nino/Nina, which I assume you know at least back to 1950:

1) 2004-5/05-06/06-07 but they were all only weak

2) 1963-4/64-5/65-6 but 1963-4/64-5 were only moderate/weak

3) 1923-4/24-5/25-6 but 1923-4/24-5 were only moderate

4) 1902-3/03-4/04-5: 1902-3 was a strong Nino but 1903-4 was only a weak Nina

5) 1885-6/86-7/87-8 but 1885-6/86-7 were only moderate

 The above list fwiw suggests to me that there might be a better shot if 2024-5 were to end up only a moderate La Niña like 1924-5 and 1886-7. After all, it is still way too early to say that it is a forgone conclusion that 2024-5 will peak as a strong Niña. Also, keep in mind the unusual situation of this massive undersea volcanic eruption. Is it possible that analogs are not as useful as they’d otherwise be?

While I don’t think this Niña will be weak, that’s a good point. There is some support for a moderate event from guidance as well. For probabilities, my early thoughts are something like this for now:

ENSO neutral: 5%
weak Niña: 5%
moderate Niña: 30%
strong Niña: 60%

Let’s do this again. Last year for the El Niño, based on the poll results voters overwhelmingly favored a strong El Niño. That ended up being correct, with the official trimonthly peak being just short of 2.0C (ended up being rounded up to 2). Coming off a borderline super nino that is already beginning to weaken rapidly, both historical precedence and the current guidance favors a La Niña for next winter. 

21 minutes ago, Terpeast said:

Early peak and decay may give us a modoki nina, worst case scenario for the east if you like cold and snow. 

Yeah that is definitely a concern. I don’t think it will stay east based, so I’m hoping for a basin wide solution rather than a modoki.

There are already signs that La Niña is developing, the subsurface is currently -0.6 C and ENSO regions 1.2 and 3 are plummeting. Does the Niña developing this early give us some information about the likely strength next winter? 

7 hours ago, GaWx said:

 Anyone want to bet that Joe Bastardi won’t go 3+ F warmer than normal for the bulk of the Ohio Valley, Mid-Atlantic, and New England for his FINAL winter forecast for 2024-5? I’m not talking about any preliminary forecasts. I actually hope I’m wrong because I’d like to see him do it for a change for his final. I can’t tell you how long it has been since he did just that. One at the very least has to go back to 2013-4 for the final one to possibly be that warm. I actually don’t know what he had for 2013-4 or earlier because I can’t find them. WxBell started ~2010.

 His preliminary winter forecast for 2020-1 was ~+3 to +4 for the bulk of the Mid-Atlantic and much of the Ohio Valley (New England was +2 to +3):

 

But then he cooled it way down for the final to mainly +0.5 to +1: that’s why I say wait until the final is released

I hope he doesn’t, because if Joe Bastardi is calling for +3-4 AN, it’s gonna be +10 AN.

10 hours ago, Great Snow 1717 said:

The usual suspects will state that a pattern change is coming....

Back in the early fall I pointed out to you the developing storm track and the strength of the El Nino.  I mentioned those weren't good signs for winter 23-24.......easiest winter that I have ever experienced....grade F-...well below normal snowfall to go along with well above normal temps. ...a non winter. 

I'll take my chances with a El/La Nothing...

Yeah you nailed it with that, the early signs were bad. I never liked this winter, which is why I forecasted 20-30 inches of snow in Boston with well above normal temps back in November. Turns out I was way too snowy, Boston will end up with half of what my low end was. Next year is likely to be a 2010-2011 strength la nina. 

4 hours ago, LibertyBell said:

la ninas after el ninos are some of our snowiest seasons on record.

It happened in both 95-96 and 10-11

I know some have been mediocre, but I like this combo.

One of the things I like about La Nina’s is you know what you are going to get with the winter by mid-late December. The good Niña winters you get buried early. If it’s a Niña and Dec torches, there’s no “oh maybe it will turn around”, it means the winter is cooked. Where as with this winter, many of us spent 2 months chasing ghosts before it became clear we were starting down a ratter. With a Niña, that false hope doesn’t exist. On the other hand if we do get snow in December, it’s a lot more fun to track storms because you know more is coming at some point.

I remember this one well, the last blizzard of the 2017-2018 winter. Haven’t had a great region wide New England winter like that since. That winter had it all, arctic air in Dec- mid Jan, multiple blizzards, and pretty good snowpack retention. There really was something for everyone, hell even Torch Tiger got in on that winter when some areas hit 80 in late Feb. 

17 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

 

YIKES, that would be horrible. Hopefully the La Niña is more east based than that.

1 hour ago, SnoSki14 said:

Scariest part of climate change is how quickly things get normalized. 

This winter and this month is far from normal. 

9 straight AN winters here.

I’m with Raindance on this. The typical strong Nino response in New England is warm and wet, and well….. it was both a historically warm and historically wet winter here. The overfitting analogy is a great one, it’s easy to think deeper analysis = better, but it doesn’t necessarily work that way. When you are training machine learning models, your accuracy actually begins decreasing after a certain point because the model begins to capture the noise rather than capture the overall trend line. It’s the same idea with this, sometimes the best way to look at it is to zoom out and look at the large scale temp and precip profiles rather than over analyze every 500mb nuance. Just to be clear, I am as guilty as anyone of overanalyzing the 500mb, so im not saying this to take a dig at others. 

1 hour ago, michsnowfreak said:

Of the 25 la nina winters since 1950, 15 of them I would gladly take a repeat, and only 3 are a big hell no.

 

After multiple record snow years spoiled weenies rotten circa 2005-2015, a lot vocally had that mindset that an average winter or even a slightly better than average winter was just not acceptable. Sounds so ridiculous now.

Yeah Im not asking for an incredible winter at this point. Give me normal temps + normal snow and I’ll be happy. 

47 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

the results are of course mixed, but some of those winters were truly godawful lol.

Yeah there were a couple good ones in there (00-01 and 08-09), but most of those winters were bad. The Niña doesn’t need to be weak, but I would like to avoid a modoki at all costs. I actually care about that more than the raw strength. I’d rather take my chances with a strong basin wide Niña than a weak modoki. 

2 hours ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Yea, you give me an awful La Nina set up and an awful El Nino set up, then I'll take the shitty La Nina....at least there is a better bet of having cold near by. If its a crap El Nino, then the entire continent is furnaced. That said, I think we need to pray for an extremely active tropical season for any hope of avoiding another shit year.

Agree 100% with this

1 hour ago, Great Snow 1717 said:

anything would be better than this F- non winter..

I set my expectations very low for this winter and it somehow ended up even warmer and less snowy than I thought, despite me expecting well AN temps and around half of normal snowfall.

3 hours ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

I would definitely want a appreciably healthy La Nina next season given a very high ACE...say near 200+...

Like 2010-2011 strength? 

1 hour ago, RUNNAWAYICEBERG said:

142yrs of data and 7 of the top 10 least snowiest Feb’s have occurred in the last 50yrs. A Ratter month is becoming more common lol.

Yep and the last 8 winters (about to be 9) have had AN temps. 

17 minutes ago, Typhoon Tip said:

GFS is trying to set the table for a heat burst ...  580 non-hydrostats to NYC fits the telecon distribution leading and during the D10-15 range.

Despite the long lead, there are some long leads that are just a wee bit higher confidence than mere noise.  

There's more to this than just that though - I have it in the back of my mind that these Feb-Mar-Apr bizarre "heat bursts" where temps soared to 80 or higher that early in the year on so many occasions over the past 15 years I've lost count.   This is clearly an attribution issue - not going to get into it.. you believe it or you don't.  But these extraordinary heat explosions began around the time that all these empirical accelerations in GW became incontrovertible. 

That's the case for it ... I'm interested in recognizing scenarios that host those events - but quite intuitively, they occur inside warm scaffolding.   Having an every telecon there is in or accelerating into a warm mode post the 24th of the month, while operational runs have begun rolling a ridge E of 100W, certainly fits.   So we'll see if this manifest in some kind of ( yet again ) absurdly early heat, or if it is just another ordinary warm episode.  

Those Heat bursts you mention is something I noticed happening earlier and earlier. 70s in March used to be very rare, and now it seems like every couple years we soar into the 70s in Feb. 

11 minutes ago, WinterWolf said:

Comical.

 

As I said on the previous page..last year you’s all were hoping for a Nino.  Now you’re hoping for a Nina.  Funny. 

All depends on where you live. My area in New England statistically does the worst in super ninos and second worst in strong ninos (especially non modokis) so I am expecting this upcoming winter to be a fairly benign winter here, like last year (not quite that extreme, but nevertheless below normal snow and above normal temps). Ninas following ninos are often really damn good in SNE, 1995-1996 and 2010-2011 are good examples. If we do get a Nina, I would think it would be a fairly strong one since this El Niño is going to be quite strong. If you are right and we go from super nino to strong Nina, the mid Atlantic will likely do better relative to average this winter than the next so I would expect most mid Atlantic folks would prefer this winter. I would expect my area to do well during the strong Nina and poorly this winter. In fact, the progression you are describing is very similar to 2009-2010 to 2010-2011. This nino will likely be stronger than that one, but regardless that went from strong nino after a multi year Nina to a very strong La Niña in 2010-2011. 
 

the bolded was my post in July. It didn’t end up being entirely correct as the mid Atlantic struggled too, but regardless I feel I have been pretty consistent about my preference for La Niña over any nino that is not weak. I was negative about this winter since it became clear this El Niño would be a strong event. That is why I have been more toned down with my posts this winter. I never liked the pattern. I did take the cheese a couple of times when the models were giving me big snow, but I never once thought this winter would be good here.