So I do believe in MJO stuff like Tip. IE constructive/destructive type setups. Like Will said it’s difficult to predict, but the physics behind it play a role with the whole Rossby wave train, especially in the NPAC. That’s traditionally where we look, but it circles the globe. Many argue how fast or slow it circles the globe...in fact some even think it’s a convectively coupled Kelvin wave. We really don’t know a ton about it. In any case Ventrice showed me an example (I’ll try to find it tomorrow) of a low frequency standing wave pattern responsible for the 13-14, and 14-15 winter. I’m sure it’s not everything, but I was pretty impressed by it. So that definitely played a role.
By no means am I saying that the strat PV doesn’t matter. I think it does. I do cringe when some make a forecast based on the strat over Siberia on the gfs op run. I feel like we’re always trying to find a smoking gun. Perhaps a few times we used the PV to forecast and it worked. But in my mind, I don’t see how that alone could be successful.
I’m not sure what’s going on. Perhaps this new temperature regime with warm water everywhere is really screwing up analogs. Every vendor I saw including WSI was thinking cold. Instead it’s near record warmth since 12-1 over a large part of the conus. We really don’t have a lot of skill unless we know it’s a strong Nina or Nino. This winter is bringing a big slice of humble pie to many long range calls.