weatherwiz

Yeah this is something I definitely won't be incorporating into my outlook because I have zero knowledge on these and how they can influence the stratosphere-troposphere. I'll have a little section dedicated to "other factors that I am clueless on, but are important" to touch on this.

Yes, I agree with that. I remember too trying to focus a quite a bit on that characterization...in fact, that was my plan when I started really getting back into seasonal forecasting late last fall and I started with all my composites. But in doing so, I've found that the characterization alone isn't as important as some say it is...but you're absolutely right, it still needs to be incorporated. I at least found this to be true with EL Nino...not sure about La Nina but I'm going to begin La Nina composite stuff after finishing my outlook and work on it until winter gets crazy.

This is a route I'm trying to go as well. This is my first attempt at a seasonal outlook in quite sometime...probably since like 2014 and I like where I've come along since. I think I just used to look at the ONI, look for years in which values were similar, and those years were my analogs

Correct, this I understand. This is why I've created all those GIFs and have my massive binder of print outs I always look at anomalies first and then a hard index value second.

I'm hoping to be able to spend some time looking back at zonal/meridional wind means and anomalies from previous Nino's. I have some composites made for those but I only did a breakdown based on tropical forcing. But now that I have seemed to shake off my confusion, having a +PNA would certainly help with keeping the northern stream around and potentially involved, correct?

We'll really have to see how coupled the atmosphere/ocean become. I have to believe we may see some significant changes within the PAC (outside of the ENSO region) because the current configuration with the growing and strengthening Nino is rather bizarre. Part of me really thinks that even if we do see a stronger EL Nino (but not quite super status) this EL Nino may act like EL Nino's of yore which could bode very well for us.

Yeah I had it reversed... A strongly +PNA is pretty solid...it's when the +PNA is of a weaker signal issues can arise. But I'll be digging more into the PNA side of things this upcoming week and aiming to have my outlook complete this weekend. https://www.worldclimateservice.com/2021/09/08/pacific-north-america/

It would depend. If we're in a suppressed pattern, if the jet is active, it probably wouldn't benefit us much. The look above looks like a fairly strong +PNA. I know +PNA comes across as good for us, but I think if the +PNA is moderate-to-strong that results in a suppressed jet stream. What I find highly intriguing though is some of the looks presented on these seasonal models are much more consistent with how the atmosphere responded to EL Nino's prior to the 1970's. Many of the EL Nino's since then have been much warmer. I am hoping to really finalize my thoughts on the upcoming winter by this weekend, but I am not so quick to jump on the warmer just because we may see a strong EL Nino. This EL Nino may be one of the more unique we've seen, especially given the state of the PDO (which is negative). unless the PDO signal weakens it's fairly negative and there are not many (stronger) EL Nino's with this PDO state. There also aren't many EL Nino's with a robust PNA signal like displayed above. One thing that does seem to be a fixture of EL Nino's is perhaps not necessarily blocking, but above-average heights within the Arctic domain through Greenland. If we did see the troughing across the southern US like what is advertised this would help with a stronger STJ and as long as the pattern isn't suppressed we could really cash in. I am a bit skeptical of how helpful the Arctic will be though. While it's always good to see above-average heights within the Arctic - Greenland domain, that doesn't always equate to blocking or mean there is blocking. The QBO phase and trend is one that reduces the potential for blocking as well. Anyways, at least in my mind, this is going to be one of the more unique EL Nino winters we've seen. Even when I finalize my thoughts I am not sure how confident I will feel because I can ultimately see this winter going in any direction.

That December pattern is a pretty classic EL Nino look, especially with some of the more recent EL Nino's. That is a great evolution into January though, but my concern would be suppression and perhaps moreso, a rather inactive storm track.

I know the depth of the warm waters don't seem particularly deep, at least enough to make me feel like we are headed towards EL Nino. We'll have to see if we can maybe get some strong WWB's as well. After a rapid transition into EL Nino, however, the degree of warming has certainly leveled off and maybe even slightly decreased.

Something else I wanted to add to this. It's also extremely interesting the gap between weak EL Nino events. After the 1979-1980 weak EL Nino (which isn't even defined via the ENS-ONI) there was not a weak EL Nino until 2004-2005 (which also was not defined via the ENS-ONI).

I'm not even sure if a quick turn around would have much of an influence.

I've spent much of the weekend constructing my thoughts on the upcoming winter and really hammering into things and there is one thing I've noticed. There has been an absolutely glaring shift in atmospheric circulations between older EL Nino events and newer EL Nino events (say from like the 1970's or early 1980's onwards). Now it is interesting to note that it is possible data sources and data sets could be a big driver here. While there are ENSO categorizations dating back into the mid-to-late 1800's it's obviously important to understand there may be questions with the validity and accuracy of the data. I know Ray only focury900-onwards. The NCEP/NCAR R1 dataset contains data from 1948-Present and the 20th Century Reanalysis V3 dataset contains data from 1836-2015. So for the earlier ENSO years I used the CRV3 dataset (years 1900-1980) and NCEP/NCAR from 1981-Present. anyways, check this out. Note: These are just weak EL Nino's. (some of the earlier ones were borderline moderate so I removed them and re-plotted, trying to see if it maybe would skew more towards later EL Nino years and no. Obviously the major thing here is a very weak (perhaps even reversed) Aleutian Low. Anyways though certainly could be other drivers (PDO state which I'm starting to dig into as well).

Are you not able to look at previous dates anymore? There used to be a whole thing at the bottom where you could look at different dates going back like several months or even year. https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/cb/ssta/ssta.daily.current.png

Yeah the amount of resources and work would be very large and quite complex. Way above anything my noggin can do

Agreed - good point. I really wish we had a great dataset of like near-miss events. I know the KU books has some cases on these but having such a dataset I think would expand skill set significantly. Of course, there would have to be some definitions to define "near misses". I mean the GFS or CMC or some random model from someone's basement showing a blizzard 10 days out which doesn't verify does not count as a "near miss".

I've never been a fan of snowfall predictions in seasonal outlooks. IMO, something such as snowfall or even precipitation isn't necessarily tied into the pattern, but more so deviations which happen during pattern evolutions. When you look at seasonal snowfall totals and compare to ENSO, NAO, AO, etc., sure you may see some "correlation" but the correlations aren't very strong in that the spread is still relatively high. While a pattern such as WC ridge and EC trough can be associated with increased snow chances, that doesn't necessarily mean it is going to happen or will occur (which I think everyone understands). I think what's more important is how the pattern is evolving which is very tough to create in composites. You can create H5 anomalies for snowiest and least snowiest winters and certainly draw a quick correlation, however, what that won't tell you is how things evolved leading up to the event. That is more important than just WC ridge/EC trough in the composite.

I am hoping to spend a good chunk of this weekend formulating some thoughts on the upcoming winter. I've always found seasonal forecasting to be quite intriguing, albeit stressful but haven't really been able to dabble much into it. Started getting back into it last fall.

Came across this chart. Not sure how old it is. But it looks like values closer to 1 indicate it has a strong impact on the pattern and values closer to 10 indicate less importance https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/teledoc/teletab.gif

I found a bit of a work away after going at it for some time. 1) I did not realize most web browsers no longer support ftp. 2) I don't know what made me try this but within the url I just removed ftp and added http://www. and it worked!!! I had no other clue of accessing TNH data...looked everywhere. Though my brief start at the TNH (which I haven't really looked at in like 10 years) is it is very chaotic in nature.

Does anyone know why on the CPC indices pages when you click "Historical Index" to view the data this pop up happens?

Crazy morning here. Will have like a 45 second shower and have had periods where it's pretty bright with sun peaking through.

Missing the sunset pics

What kind of spider is this

I've been debating on just focusing on 1950 onwards as well, however, we do have enough reliable data to incorporate years prior to 1950, it's just there has to be an understanding that the data be used with caution. The issue with just going from 1950 onwards is you're really limiting your dataset and eliminating potential outcomes or probabilities.