George001

I agree with most of this and am leaning mild myself, but I will push back on the IOD point you are making as well as the Siberian snowcover. Yes, the IOD is is expected to be strongly positive, but there was a graph posted earlier in this thread by gaWX that showed a weakly negative correlation between +IOD and eastern US temps. The data does not support +IOD being a mild signal in the east, if anything it’s a slight cold signal. I also disagree that the Siberian snow cover signal is useless, it isn’t everything but it has its value. That said, regardless of what the Siberian snowcover and IOD does I am going mild simply because in my opinion the mild drivers are stronger than the cold ones. Point 5 in particular that you made in my opinion is being overlooked. The -PDO is near record strong, and -PDO is a warm signal in the east. The +IOD is actually favorable for us, but the way I see it is the -PDO and east based strong/super nino are going to overwhelm. Honestly, with how negative the PDO is even if the El Niño was weak I would still probably be going mild. Imo AGW made it a lot more difficult to overcome a bad pacific than it used to be, so those good 1970s winters with a -PDO will be tough to replicate.

Yeah 14-15, 77-78, etc aren’t good analogs but 2009 is due to the strength of the El Niño.

I know snowman rubs a lot of people the wrong way, but there is no question that he knows his shit. I learned a lot about El Niño development from reading his posts in his thread. I honestly don’t agree at all with him being 5 posted, yeah he has his biases but a lot of us do. I have mine too, the difference my idea and much of this forums idea of paradise is a raging blizzard with below 0 temps, and his idea of paradise is sunbathing in 100+ degree heat. I don’t know why it rubs people the wrong way, if you like warmer weather and get excited about warm signals, that’s cool. I love snow as much as anyone, but it is a weather board, not just a post about anything that favors cold and snow board.

Am I missing something here? Even the initial tweet supports the idea of a positive NAO. The NAO during the 2014-2015 winter was strongly positive. It was a cold and extremely snowy winter, but it was not a good example of an “el nino blocking pattern”.

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.