weatherwiz

I don't disagree with anything you said here. This is exactly why IMO getting too detailed with seasonal outlooks and long-range forecasting can ultimately bite you. There is absolutely no way to diagnose or predict the noise. Ultimately, it's going to be the noise which influences the details of a season. For anyone who partakes in seasonal forecasting, the best course of action is to probably do an initial outlook which focuses on pattern and evolution and incorporating all the variables...and then over the course of the season follow up forecasts are done which can focus more on the noise and details.

This season further emphasized that when it comes to the NAO (and this can be used for PNA, EPO, etc). it has way more to do whether the index is positive or negative, it's all about evolution, structure, and where the core of the anomalies are within the domain.

1000% agreed. This is the mindset everyone needs to have and consider. We will also encounter evolutions we've never seen before just b/c there is in infinite number of potential outcomes. One big example of this was the notion that we couldn't get KU's during La Nina's b/c it had "never happened" Well early 2010's had something to say about that.

This is so helpful. I am going to go back and look at my printouts of SSTA's for all LA Nina/EL Nino events and just study them harder and more closely. I would agree, you can't be too restrictive with definitions because you're not going to get "perfect" matches. This is especially true with those modoki events (which I think I understand so much better now)...it's difficult to ever get the core anomalies well into the far western edge of the defined ENSO region.

I'll take some time to go back and review your previous works. I know you do a phenomenal job laying everything out and breaking it down.

so essentially, modoki is when the core anomalies are located within the western side of the ENSO region (applying to both EL Nino and La Nina)

I found doing structure for EL Nino to be much more challenging then it was for La Nina's. When you construct yours I'll throw my graphs into the ENSO discussion thread. I was actually going to explore whether assessing tropical forcing would be a better proxy then SSTA's alone. This is also something I think the trans-nino index is meant to provide, but I find it understanding the TNI a bit confusing.

That is going to be some convective line that moves through tomorrow night. Higher terrain could easily pick up a quick inch or two of snow and could be a graupel fest for many. Probably going to see a decent amount of thunder/lightning too. EDIT: should add this is ore favorable for western sections and northwest specifically

Thank you! This makes tremendous sense then. When I was doing EL Nino structure I found very few events which could be considered west-based.

I still don't fully understand Modoki EL Nino. Does this involve or incorporate SSTA's off the west coast of the US? Also, I think it gets alot harder to correlate EL Nino strength b/c of when EL Nino typically peaks and how rapidly it can weaken. One thing I find interesting is majority of EL Nino events prior to 1960 seemed to remain pretty steadfast through the winter season, but since then there has been a greater tendency for events to rapidly weaken during the late fall/early winter months. I'm actually working on trying to do breakdowns of weak, moderate, strong but finding it a bit challenging. There are also some events which peaked in the late summer/early fall, so do you classify based off peak strength or whatever the strength was maybe in the trimonthly period or two before winter (DJF)?

The correlation between ENSO phase and snowfall is too weak IMO to really draw any conclusions (except for maybe strong events...but even with these, the sample size is very small). We've had weak warm/cold events produce good and bad seasons and we've had moderate warm/cold events produce good/bad seasons. I mean speaking straight from a statistical standpoint, as you said weak Nino's tend to be "best" but the correlation isn't enough to say "bank on it". The correlation's seem to have done down a bit too from where they were say 10-20 years ago as the dataset expands and we've been able to expand the historical dataset through reanalysis techniques.

I am really hoping Saturday's warm sector doesn't turn out to be that dirty. I'm hoping to be able to watch the Bruins game outside and clean up dog poop. There is several months worth of dog poop in the yard. It's like walking across a field of land mines.

I know you don't do anything with prior to 1950 but I'll throw 1911-1912 in your mix as well.

Could even see the potential for some strong thunderstorms across NY/PA into western MA and northwest CT late Saturday!!!!

Thank you! Love that price…that’s what I was hoping for

What’s the best “dirt” to get to fill holes in the yard (like gopher holes)? Only thing I can think of is like planting soil but Lowe’s or Home Depot must have something else

The best bet for forecasting temperatures on days like today is using Bufkit and tossing the NAM. With Bufkit you can play around with different mixing heights which is fun to do. Miss doing that with the weather challenge

Cold and rainy and had some sleet. Great day to watch the Bruins and Lightning beat each other up

Just saw a bobcat on the backyard

Some of those EPS members, combined with the OP's evolution at 500 is enough to keep interest in the game

sweet! If I get some time in the upcoming days I want to do an average vs. average with outliers removed. Will be fun to see the difference. The differences though aren't really going to be drastic.

To get the true average outlier seasons should be removed from the calculation of the mean. What really sucks is I have no clue where to go anymore for historical snowfall records. The data blank from the mid 90's to early 2000's sucks and that threadex or whatever page I think that has it had completely different numbers for several stations that I had written down that the NWS had listed like 10-years ago. I wanted to compare the long-term average at all stations and then do a calculation with outliers removed and just curious to see what the difference comes out to be. BUT THE RECORD KEEPING IS ABSOLUTE TOTAL DOG SHIT

This is probably the type of setup we need to actually get something

We'll find out next week

GFS with a sneaky event Monday night