I'm starting to doubt whether we will get there in January. I think we need to see substantial changes even west of the Pacific...like across Russia/Asia. We continue to see extremely strong jet extensions from that continent through the Pacific with significant wave breaking occurring across the eastern Pacific and across the west coast. IMO, I think we are actually going to need stronger support for the Arctic and get blocking to become more favorable. Everytime we seem to get a favorable pattern we keep getting weaknesses and see crap cut to our west.
I could be totally wrong on this, but the past few years (including this year) it seems one big problem is the exit region of the jet off the Asian continent has been displaced farther south. Having this farther north would be a major game changer.