George001

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Agree 100% with this

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.

Like 2010-2011 strength?

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

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.

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.

I am actually very optimistic about next winter. There is a positive correlation between how active a hurricane season is and snowfall in the east during La Nina’s. Given how warm the temps are in the Atlantic Ocean and how La Niña is expected to develop fairly early (May-June), if the Niña does develop as expected I like our chances.

I don’t even care about being in the jackpot. I’m not supposed to, there’s a reason why areas NW average way more snow than I do. If I get 50 inches with average temps and people NW of me get 100 inches, that’s still a decent winter. If I get 40 inches with +3 AN temps and areas NW of me get 20-30 inches, that still fucking SUCKS. I will take the 1st winter over the second one any day, even though I got “porked”. The reason why these past 2 years have been shit isn’t just because I got porked, it’s because the large scale pattern has been shit AND I got porked on top of that.

I’m hoping we can get winter to feel like winter the next couple of years. I’m not asking for an epic winter with 70-80+ inches of snow, just a normal winter with average snow and average temps. It has been terrible with all the warmth.

It is done here. No cold air to be found. I would like to track more threats in March but I am not optimistic. Im more excited about next winter.

Early signs are for a very active high ACE hurricane season. Early developing Niña + the unusually warm Atlantic is making me think this hurricane season will be extreme.

sometimes the large scale pattern is just really bad. Nothing wrong with giving up and just accepting it isn’t our year, and looking to the next winter. I’m still going to track because I track rainstorms too (which is what I am expecting the 24th to be for my area), but I am officially declaring my 20-30 inch seasonal forecast for the Boston area a massive BUST. Boston will not crack 20 inches this year, I would bet money on it. Honestly, I don’t think they will crack 15 at this point.

It would be nice to have a threat where temps aren’t even remotely a concern.