bluewave

The EC-AIFS is most optimistic with 3 days starting next Monday potentially reaching 70°+ in NJ.

Hopefully, the EC-AIFS will score another win over the OP Euro like it has been doing all winter with the backdoor further north allowing the first 70s of the season for the usual warm spots in NJ.

The Nino 1+2 based RONI was much higher and is better correlated with the global temperature jump since early 2023 with the Nino 1+2 ONI peaking over +3. The global temperature rise around the 2023-2024 El Niño was of a greater magnitude than just using a Nino 3.4 based RONI. This may be part of the reason that the winter of 2023-2024 had the atmospheric response and North American warmth greater than past even stronger El Niños .Plus the warmth extending west of the Dateline set records for those regions also. So the totality of the warmth gave a weaker RONI reading in 3.4. It also highlights the weakness of relying on RONI for El Niños is a warmer world. As RONI seems to be more relevant when we get La Ninas due to the SST gradient between the WPAC and EPAC. We still aren’t completely sure why the warming started so much earlier in 2023 than any event without the El Niño warming lag that we got in the past.

The recent Euro forecast increase in El Niño strength is due to the model initializing the record February upper ocean heat content for a developing El Niño. But as always we’ll have to wait until we get past the spring forecast barrier in order to know the exact strength. If we do get another event near or over +2 only 3 years after the 2023-2024 event, then it would be a first. The unusual and record early warming in 2023 for a developing El Niño may have signaled a shift in the PCC near Nino 1+2 leading to faster warming and more frequent stronger El Niños.

Pretty impressive how the record ridge out West which began back in November is continuing into March. But the Northeast trough isn’t quite as strong as it has been. So it looks like a weaker reflection of the pattern in the Northeast at least. This corresponds to the typical backdoor pattern that we see in the spring.

I posted this in the main ENSO thread and CC forum. If we do see another stronger El Niño so soon after 2023-2024, then it may be another piece of the puzzle indicating that the PCC has shifted positive leading to the big spike in global temperatures since 2023. We probably need to get past the spring forecast barrier in order to know the details of how strong this one gets. It’s possible that the faster rate of warming since 2023 is related to a shift in the newly discovered PCC near Nino 1.2. Notice the current Nino 1.2 temperatures have warmed in recent weeks. The last El Niño in 2023-2024 also experienced earlier warming than past events as the Nino 1+2 warming was early also. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-52731-6?utm_campaign=related_content&utm_source=HEALTH&utm_medium=communities Much recent work focused on whether equatorial Pacific cooling over past decades is driven by anthropogenic effects or arises from internally-generated climate variability, like the IPO. A definitive anthropogenic link to the recent trends would allow us to reliably predict a cooler tropical Pacific. As the tropical Pacific is known to be a climatic pacemaker, for (at least) the near-future this would mitigate global warming via ocean heat uptake and low-level cloud feedbacks. Instead, if the cyclic IPO dominates the recent cooling, we may expect a strong warming when it reverses. In support of the first possibility, we have identified an emerging climate change signal in the tropical Pacific across different observational datasets and we call it the PCC. The PCC has distinctive ocean-atmosphere dynamics that differ from those associated with the IPO. We further demonstrate that the recent trends during the satellite era, which have been the focus of significant attention, result from a combination of IPO and PCC. The emerging PCC SST trend pattern features a narrow band of cooling in the eastern equatorial Pacific and warming elsewhere. Throughout this paper we have taken for granted the widespread assumption that the IPO is an internal mode of the climate system. However, while we worked to distinguish between the recurrent IPO-related decadal variability and the emerging PCC signal, we are open to the possibility that these two may have become coupled together by anthropogenic forcing. They have much in common: shoaling of the thermocline in the east, enhanced upwelling somewhere in the central-to-eastern equatorial Pacific and an enhanced zonal SST gradient across the equatorial Pacific. It seems reasonable to postulate that if the response to radiative forcing is the emerging PCC pattern seen here, then it could initiate coupled ocean-atmosphere feedbacks that favor a negative IPO state that also has an enhanced SST gradient24. This might explain why the most recent IPO swing has been extreme and robust (Fig. S1b). If so, this suggests that in nature forcing is projecting onto natural modes of variability, while it is not clear whether climate models can reproduce this behavior. A new perspective on how internal variability interacts with the climate change signal will be needed in future studies

With a little luck, the worst of the heat this summer stays to our West. But you can see the case for pieces of heat coming east from time to time. Developing El Niño summers after La Niña winters have sometimes featured the strongest heat out West. Looks like a bit of a continuation of the winter pattern with the strongest Euro heat signal out West like we saw with the record warmth there this winter. The spring forecast also suggests an active backdoor potential with the Northeast being the coolest relative to other areas

If we do see another stronger El Niño so soon after 2023-2024, then it may be another piece of the puzzle indicating that the PCC has shifted positive leading to the big spike in global temperatures since 2023. We probably need to get past the spring forecast barrier in order to know the details of how strong this one gets. It’s possible that the faster rate of warming since 2023 is related to a shift in the newly discovered PCC near Nino 1.2. Notice the current Nino 1.2 temperatures have warmed in recent weeks. The last El Niño in 2023-2024 also experienced earlier warming than past events as the Nino 1+2 warming was early also. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-52731-6?utm_campaign=related_content&utm_source=HEALTH&utm_medium=communities Much recent work focused on whether equatorial Pacific cooling over past decades is driven by anthropogenic effects or arises from internally-generated climate variability, like the IPO. A definitive anthropogenic link to the recent trends would allow us to reliably predict a cooler tropical Pacific. As the tropical Pacific is known to be a climatic pacemaker, for (at least) the near-future this would mitigate global warming via ocean heat uptake and low-level cloud feedbacks. Instead, if the cyclic IPO dominates the recent cooling, we may expect a strong warming when it reverses. In support of the first possibility, we have identified an emerging climate change signal in the tropical Pacific across different observational datasets and we call it the PCC. The PCC has distinctive ocean-atmosphere dynamics that differ from those associated with the IPO. We further demonstrate that the recent trends during the satellite era, which have been the focus of significant attention, result from a combination of IPO and PCC. The emerging PCC SST trend pattern features a narrow band of cooling in the eastern equatorial Pacific and warming elsewhere. Throughout this paper we have taken for granted the widespread assumption that the IPO is an internal mode of the climate system. However, while we worked to distinguish between the recurrent IPO-related decadal variability and the emerging PCC signal, we are open to the possibility that these two may have become coupled together by anthropogenic forcing. They have much in common: shoaling of the thermocline in the east, enhanced upwelling somewhere in the central-to-eastern equatorial Pacific and an enhanced zonal SST gradient across the equatorial Pacific. It seems reasonable to postulate that if the response to radiative forcing is the emerging PCC pattern seen here, then it could initiate coupled ocean-atmosphere feedbacks that favor a negative IPO state that also has an enhanced SST gradient24. This might explain why the most recent IPO swing has been extreme and robust (Fig. S1b). If so, this suggests that in nature forcing is projecting onto natural modes of variability, while it is not clear whether climate models can reproduce this behavior. A new perspective on how internal variability interacts with the climate change signal will be needed in future studies.

Pretty impressive Southeast Ridge flex next week after being on hiatus for several months.

The loop back west just off MTP was a one of a kind track. So it allowed the deformation bands to stall in place leading to a 50”-60” jackpot across the interior. Around my area there was a 42” measurement which exceeded Nemo in 2013. https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/the-blizzard-of-1888-americas-greatest-snow-disaster

There have been a series of temperature jumps over the years which have resulted in changes to how the CONUS experiences their winters. We had a fairly stable global temperature regime from 1895 to 1982 with only a gentle increase in temperatures. This why the CONUS and our area haven’t had a top 10 coldest winter since then. Warming began to pick up in 1983 and gradually increased until 1996-1997. The first significant jump in 1997-1998 kicked off our all or nothing snowfall pattern with nearly all the sea seasons well below or well above average snowfall and average seasons largely missing. The all-time snowy winters patterns were able to continue up through 2014-2015 in Boston. The 2015-2016 even larger temperature jump shrank the Northern Hemisphere winter cold pool so we haven’t been able to challenge the all-time snowy seasons that we experienced during the 1993-1994 to 2014-2015 period when the global and CONUS temperatures didn’t change that much. That was the sweet spot that I was referring to when temperarures were in a colder range than today.

The Northern Hemisphere winter cold pool has really shrunk following the dramatic warming which occurred in 2015-2016 across the globe and North America. So while this was a great winter for us, it was the 2nd warmest across the CONUS. Past winters this cold and snowy in the East also had extensive cold further to our West with much colder CONUS rankings. Several years had coast to coast cold which was missing this winter. So in this much warmer world it was a challenge for places to have an all-time winter for both snow and cold. There was definitely a colder global temperature sweet spot from 1993-1994 to 2014-2015. This allowed for the all-time snowiest winter in PA during 1993-1994, our area in 1995-1996, DC to Philly in 2009-2010, Detroit and the Great Lakes in 2013-2014, and Boston in 2014-2015. None of these benchmarks were able to be approached this winter with the smaller footprint of the cold. The big question going forward is how long will it be before we see another locally cold and snowy winter near this magnitude since the last ones were over 11 years ago? Climatologist49 ‪@climatologist49.bsky.social‬ Follow December 2025 through February 2026 was the 2nd warmest winter on record for the Contiguous U.S. according to Prism climate data. The widespread record to near record warmth in the west easily outweighed the cool temps in the east. 11:39 AM · Mar 1, 2026

Looks like some lingering cold from the winter next few days before the pattern shifts warmer for early meteorological spring.

It was great to see Newark finally have a top 25 snowfall season following 4 higher ranking low seasons during the 2020s. Time Series Summary for NEWARK LIBERTY INTL AP, NJ Snowiest Seasons Click column heading to sort ascending, click again to sort descending. 1 1996-04-30 78.4 0 2 1868-04-30 75.3 0 3 1961-04-30 73.5 0 4 1873-04-30 71.7 1 5 1907-04-30 70.2 2 6 1854-04-30 69.3 30 7 2011-04-30 68.2 0 8 1978-04-30 64.9 0 9 1994-04-30 64.5 0 10 1899-04-30 63.5 4 - 1867-04-30 63.5 0 11 1852-04-30 63.3 0 12 1948-04-30 61.6 0 13 2014-04-30 61.1 0 14 1920-04-30 60.6 0 15 1958-04-30 58.3 0 16 1856-04-30 57.8 0 17 1923-04-30 57.4 0 18 1967-04-30 57.3 0 19 1875-04-30 56.5 31 20 1916-04-30 56.2 0 21 1905-04-30 55.1 0 22 2026-04-30 54.5 63 23 2003-04-30 53.1 0 24 1893-04-30 52.8 34 25 1857-04-30 52.0 0 1 1973-04-30 1.9 0 2 2023-04-30 2.7 0 3 2002-04-30 3.6 0 4 1879-04-30 4.3 90 5 1919-04-30 4.5 0 6 2020-04-30 6.9 0 - 1998-04-30 6.9 0 - 1931-04-30 6.9 123 7 1932-04-30 7.3 0 8 1989-04-30 7.5 0 9 2012-04-30 8.8 0 10 1901-04-30 9.8 2 11 1995-04-30 10.3 0 12 1950-04-30 10.7 0 13 1951-04-30 10.9 0 14 1937-04-30 11.0 0 15 1938-04-30 11.1 0 16 2024-04-30 12.2 0 17 1878-04-30 12.4 0 18 1876-04-30 12.6 30 19 1999-04-30 12.8 0 20 2025-04-30 13.6 0 21 1955-04-30 13.7 0 22 1992-04-30 13.9 0 - 1968-04-30 13.9 0 - 1942-04-30 13.9 0 23 1954-04-30 14.0 0 24 1980-04-30 14.3 0 - 1953-04-30 14.3 0 25 1990-04-30 14.5 0