Stormchaserchuck1

Line faded Really hoping for some better thunderstorms this year. The last few years has been nothing like when I was younger.

Line is holding together nicely so far!

Look what's showing up on radar.. hoping it will hold together later tonight https://radar.weather.gov/station/KLWX/standard

A lot of cold SSTA right now from Africa to almost the Virgin islands.. this is much different from last year. Last Spring the central-south Atlantic waters were warm where it is now cool. I think Gawx has posted the stats about the rate of cooling there.

A big reason we didn't have big snows last Winter was the La Nina subtropical jet.. this started in May 2024, just when ENSO usually starts effecting for the year.. If I had to guess, I would say last Winter acted like a Moderate east-based La Nina.

We are still in decadal -PDO, although that may change over the next 3-4 Winters with a higher likelihood of El Nino coming in 26-27 and 27-28, imo. I would even say the +2-3 year time frame is 2-3x more likely to see El Nino than La Nina.. if that happens over a few years, the PDO may not be so negative anymore... although the PDO is less connected to ENSO than you would think.

Some of the methods that you have been addressed with are not outdated. I've presented how 720 monthly NAO readings have led to X, and you've taken maybe 5-6 recent examples to prove otherwise. It's obvious that everything is warming, but this is a weather board. We aren't going to dismiss all things because the climate is warmer.. It's more a challenge of getting the fluctuations right within the pattern. Forecasting the next 10 Winters to all be above average is boring, although you may get 8/10 correct.

You weren't too cold last Winter. It is good to see what you are doing right and wrong though in seasonal outlooks.. at least you are doing seasonal outlooks. You are 1 of 2 people on here that does that.. it's one thing to talk about things after the fact, it's another thing to use methodology to try to predict it in advance.

I still don't get how the CPC called this +PNA.. must be an error

I actually deleted it, because I saw the December contract is still near $4.40.. which is pretty neutral, maybe leaning a little warm (I call under $5 warm, over $5 cool.. or at least under $5 favors +NAO, over $5 favors -NAO). It's good to see all that's going on, so that you can sort of see how it specifically relates to weather. Thanks for posting.

Do you really want to say it's because of a marine heatwave near Japan, which is a more localized phenomenon, or I would say decadal cycle of Hadley Cell expansion in the Pacific (decadal La Nina state) On the edges of it, the Southwest, US has been very hot in the Summer, and Japan has been very warm at different times of the year.. but it's an overall pattern centered around Nino 3.4, in my opinion. I realize their base period of '91-20 averages makes the map look less impressive, but here is '49-98.. no Hadley Cell feature here My point is that the Hadley Cell feature still sticks out, even when they were using '48-20 averages.

I don't mean to sound grumpy or anything, I just don't think there's any science behind it. I remember the days when scientific reasons were given ahead of an analog composite, so that the analogs 2nd'd the point. I think Ray (40/70) still proceeds like that.

Why is Neutral after neutral cold? What's the logical reasoning behind this? 5 years in a sample set is too small to make conclusions, and when something is "neutral" that just means "normal" or "average climo signal". I want to go back to how all "Weak La Nina's" were cold going back 1950-2000. I remember everyone used to root on Weak Nina because it was a cold Winter map. Then we had 5 warm Weak Nina's in a row in the 2000s...

We are in more of a La Nina pattern right now. This started in May 2024. A good indicator is the ENSO subsurface, when there is below average water at -200m (the thermocline), below Nino 3/3.4, that translates to more of a La Nina pattern. Right now the indicator is weakish La Nina, where it's been for 14 months. The long term Hadley Cell state in the Pacific Ocean is also La Ninaish.

It was kind of a La Nina pattern this past Winter, and last year starting in about May. That's why it was so dry.. do you remember how it rained like not at all last Summer in the Northeast, and was hot? That's usually a La Nina pattern. The Winter somewhat fit it too, being cold and dry. I've correlated the ENSO subsurface with better pattern conditions than surface SSTs.. and the subsurface has been in La Nina range pretty much since February 2024. Even now, it's still weakly La Nina in the central subsurface.

Actually it's been cooling pretty nicely lately.. we might have Neutral-negative ENSO vs Neutral-Positive, which is the difference of about 1.0-1.5 more named storms/year (last season was Neutral-negative).

That's a long time. If 80% of the months of the whole year are above average, it's no mystery that snowfall goes down with 3/4 Winter months above average.. at least near the Mid Atlantic where the 32F mark is so sensitive. I still contest that we are in a "Hadley Cell expansion cycle" decadally in both the Pacific and the Atlantic, and that real snowfall decline is probably closer to ~15%. Precipitable water has been just as high globally as average temperature.

If we have a Weak La Nina this year (RONI), I would most definitely bet on a decent sized El Nino for either 26-27 or 27-28.

This is how the cold season Stratosphere has "coupled" since year 2000 (15 cases)

Pretty amazing that we ended up with 18 Named Storms last season, when there was pretty much no activity for a month mid-season.

Neutral is always more difficult... What I'm going to be looking for is if there are large -500mb anomalies around the Globe this Summer.. Last year we had 9 strong +NAO bouts (cold 500mb over Greenland), and that translated +time to a cooler Winter pattern. Will be interesting to see if the pattern continues this year, but that anomaly has been less common since October 2024.

CPC actually says that last Winter was Neutral If you take into account the global warming skew, it was a very Weak Nina. "Neutral" after Neutral doesn't actually mean much - it just means that ENSO is a weak signal. If this year is Neutral though, it would only be the 2nd time for back-to-back Neutral's since 93-94 (12-13 to 13-14 was the only other one). The back-to-back stuff has valiance because El Nino's and La Nina's warm or cool the atmosphere in lagged time, but that's less relevant this year.

Sorry - I'm not completely sure what this is saying about a disconnect. They showed a warm 30mb layer in Aug/Sept And it was actually followed by 3 months of -NAO: Sep: -1.43 Oct: -0.38 Nov: -0.23 Remember, at this time of the year, the warm Stratosphere, on average, takes +60 days to "downwell" (maybe less for 30mb vs 10mb).

Just temper your expectations Barry.. A lot has to go right to have a hyperactive season in the Atlantic. but the trends are favorable right now - We had 20 named storms during a Strong El Nino 2 years ago, and we had 30 named storms 5 years ago. But there are a lot of factors that have to go right to generally get more than 16-17 in a season. I'd watch the NAO and Atlantic tripole in May.

Keep in mind that 20 Named Storms is tied for 4th most in Atlantic history.