bluewave

January 1998 had dual forcing with one cell in Nino 3.4 and another near 1+2. The dominant forcing wound up shifting more eastward back to 1+2 in February. Both months were equally as warm. So we are just going to have to wait and see how the finer details within this much stronger historic event work out.

This developing historic El Niño has had a much stronger ridge sitting to our west in the means since last spring than we have seen before for the early development time period. Toward the end of the month the ridge begins shift eastward closer to the Northeast. The further east ridge axis is typically what we see from super El Niño events in the past heading into later fall and the winter.

The next week to perhaps 10 days looks like a northeast flow special with low pressure sitting just offshore and high pressure to the north.

The actual winter temperatures were significantly colder during the 1990s than since the warmer baseline shift in 2015-2016. Options Selected for plot Variable: Temperature Type: Average Anomaly Season: Dec to Feb Number year(s) in composite: 21 Years in composite: 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 -2015 -2016 -2017 -2018 -2019 -2020 -2021 -2022 -2023 -2024 -2025 Climatology base period: 1961-1990 Contour Interval: default

December 1997 started out record warm across the Northern Tier. But it took until January and February for the record warmth to build east. Every super El Niño has a slightly different fingerprint. So the months which have the absolute warmest overall departures can vary a bit among events. Even that winter back in the much cooler 1990s was able to string together three +10 months at various locations. December to March 2015-2016 had two +10 months. December to February 2023-2024 also had two. None of the seasonal models prior to those winters indicated such extreme warmth would occur. As they tend to greatly underestimate the actual warmth with super El Niño events.

This has been one of the warmest first half's of fall for the entire CONUS. Weather and climate statistics are just pure numbers which didn’t contain any agendas. Most of the area finished up warmer than average in September against the warmest 1991-2020 climate normals. So even relatively low departures can still be ranked fairly high. The smaller warm departures here still rank as the 13th to 15th warmest September 1st to October 15th. This is due to September and October being two of the fastest warming months near 1° per decade since the 1980s. I get it that since this warming has become so thoroughly normalized, most people including yourself probably don’t recognize a warm pattern anymore unless it’s a top 5 or a top 10.

Yes, still warmer than the Euro for the DJF period averaged out. Each of the winter months in 1997-1998 were very warm. The warmth in December 1997 was focused in the Upper Plains and progressed eastward in January and February. We haven’t had MC forcing going back to the spring and have had no shortage of record warmth across the CONUS. Also remember 1997-1998 super El Niño had no MC forcing and was one of the warmest winters up until that time. So the moral of the story is that nearly anywhere that +30 C warm pool forcing sets up in the tropics is going to produce intervals of record warmth. What you don’t realize is that stations in the CONUS have had 17 DJF months across most winters since the temperature baseline jump in December 2015 exceeding +10 in spots. I am also sure you probably aren’t aware that none of the seasonal models successfully forecast any of these 17 DJF records for the given locations before the month in question began from 1 month or more ahead of when the months began. The Euro forecasts issued on the 5th of each of those months were sometimes even too cool for where the warmest conditions were located. Especially when the warmth was focused from the mid to later portions of those months. It generally did better when the warmth began early in the month and persisted. Heck, you would be hard-pressed to find many model forecasts that showed those areas even +5 or warmer. These record +10 months have occurred under a wide variety of ENSO conditions. While seasonal forecasts can sometimes successfully show the locations of the warmth, they always miss the magnitude of the warmth. Remember our last much weaker super El Niño in 2023-2024 produced a +10 winter averaged out over 3 months in the Upper Midwest. The Euro forecast that region to be near average so it was 10° too cool. So it’s not being controversial or edgy to state that there will probably be multiple +10 months from December to March this winter that none of the seasonal models are indicating right now. The models like the Euro forecast in °C so we have to convert. The warmest it has for this winter near the Northern Tier is +2C or greater. This translates to +3.6° F or warmer. I will take the over on that where it’s currently placing the warmest potential.

The Euro is probably the warmest of the seasonal guidance. Remember that model was much too cool going into the 2023-2024 winter. This winter forecast is even warmer than that one was. So my guess is significantly warmer than the current Euro is showing.

The entire CONUS should be warmer than all the guidance with the warmest anomalies along the Northern Tier states right to the East Coast.

I think an even bigger story than the warmth this winter will be the shift to a much warmer base state from the late 2020s into the 2030s.

My early winter guess is that the temperatures will be significantly warmer than any of the current seasonal models are forecasting. The temperatures for the first half of fall have been warmer than any other super El Niño year on record. Plus this is the strongest El Niño by a significant margin.

Will be interesting to see if we can make it two consecutive years with elements of the winter pattern emerging in November.

Some of the models clear NJ out enough this afternoon for another run at 80°. Would serve to enhance the instability ahead of the severe storm potential later today. Frost vs first freeze for Sunday morning at the usual cool spots will be contingent on whether the winds can go calm for radiational cooling under the big high.

Yeah, starting to see the SW CONUS trough develop in response to the forcing extending into that area from the EPAC.

Multi-year La Ninas prior to 2018-2019 didn’t produce persistent record ridging east of Japan leading to the record upper ocean heat through the 2020s. So are correct this pattern is not being caused by the canonical -PDO of the past which was defined more by cooler SSTs in the EPAC rather than historic warmth east of Japan. It’s a whole new type of pattern outside the typical PDO. This new type of mid-latitude ridging pattern was able to persist through the spring into the present. It’s described in the papers as Pan-Basin warming overshadowing the robust Pacific Decadal oscillation. So it’s the overlapping influence of this new pattern combined with the the super El Niño forcing leading to the ridges being much stronger further to the south than has been in the case during past developing super El Niño springs into the fall. Pan-basin warming now overshadows robust Pacific Decadal Oscillation https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-025-02482-z Remarkable Changes in the Dominant Modes of North Pacific Sea Surface Temperature https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2022GL101078

I also agree with Snowman that the forcing could be stronger further east than the models are showing since this is such an extreme event.

With the historic +30C warm pool pushed so far to the east, we are just going to have to wait and see what effects the western extent of the +30C warm pool are relative to the eastern side. Plus the pattern since May has been the seasonal models underestimating the southward extent of the ridging across the CONUS. So it’s possible the typical super El Niño ridge position south of Hudson Bay gets shifted further south than usual. The ridge wound up further south than the 2023-2024 seasonal winter forecasts and that was a much weaker event than this one. This stronger mid-latitude ridge has been leading to the persistent -PDO +AMO pattern during the 2020s.

I don’t think we were discussing the same exact parameters. The Nino 3 Euro forecast is nearly identical to the JMA keeping the Nino 3 anomalies over +4 into late January or February. The Nino 1+2 forecasts for both the JMA and Euro are similar. The reason I posted the JMA is that the Euro doesn’t have an absolute forecast on their site only the anomalies. So we have to work out the Euro absolutes manually. So even if the actual Nino 1+2 absolutes top out at say 29.5 C, there will likely be +30C actual SSTs just to the north near Central America or even near southern Mexico. You can see the forcing bridge on the Euro developing linking Nino 3.4 all the way over to Central America. This is signaling how far east the +30C warm pool is going to be similar to the JMA and Euro absolutes.

I have been taking about the importance of the +30 C warm pool for years now. Back over the summer we were discussing the potential of the +30 C warm pool off of Mexico linking up with the Nino +3 +30C warm pool. So not sure what resistance you are referring to.

It’s great that the JMA has a chart showing the actual forecast SSTs. The current run now has the potential of the +30C warm pool getting pushed all the way east into Nino 1+2. Since Nino 1+2 reaches its annual peak from late winter into spring, at least one daily +4 in February would be possible since the average starts to climb above 26C. Nino 3 is similar to these values. So it’s a good bet the +30C warm pool will make it at least as far east as Nino 3. The 30C warm pool is usually the area where the tropical forcing tends to gravitate to. So while the ENSO anomalies will probably peak in December, the absolutes may not peak in the Nino 3 and 4 regions until February. So this first +30C warm pool getting so far east may produce a delayed El Niño peak forcing effect due to the historic buildup of record EPAC warmth. The JMA forecast charts show the actusl SSTs leveling off in December in Nino 3.4 and continuing to rise right into February in Nino 3 and 1+2. https://ds.data.jma.go.jp/wmc/products/model/indices/3-mon/indices1/shisu_forecast.php

At least another period of extended onshore flow with the big high to the north and developing low somewhere underneath.

Right on cue the models are slowing the frontal passage for Friday into Saturday. This has been the theme all year from weekend winter snowstorms to thunderstorms and nor’easters into the fall. So it looks like we’ll have more measurable rain here early Saturday. Luckily not the all day washout that we just had this past Sunday. But just enough light morning showers keep the measurable weekend precipitation streak going before we clear out during the day Saturday. New run Old run

Usually when the POPS are 20% or less they leave it off the point and clicks. But they will include it in the SFT. Today had only 10s or 20s on the POPS on the SFT. https://forecast.weather.gov/product.php?site=NWS&issuedby=OKX&product=SFT&format=CI&version=4&glossary=0

All the models had scattered showers and clouds today. The highs in many areas will probably be in the next hour. Seeing several 80° readings with the clearing in NJ now.

The main issue China is having with renewable energy is that the transmission infrastructure hasn’t been able to keep pace. So much of the clean energy has gone unused. This has lead to the continuing reliance on coal. While AI data centers also utilize large amounts of electricity, it would be interesting to see if AI can eventually figure out a way to transition away from fossil fuels. We know that AI hasn’t been getting very good press lately due to the haphazard implementation. It would be ironic if AI could lead to the development of a new exotic clean energy source. Even a more effective way to manage wind and solar would be a welcome AI achievement. https://e360.yale.edu/digest/china-renewable-curtailments China is leading the world on renewable energy, last year installing more wind and solar capacity than every other country put together. But its buildout has unfolded at such a ferocious pace that China is now generating much more electricity than its power grid can handle, meaning that huge amounts of clean power are going unused. When the grid is at capacity, operators must reject electricity from wind and solar plants to prevent overloads and blackouts. In the first six months of this year, China rejected 360 terawatt-hours of clean energy, enough to power Mexico for a year, according to a report from Global Energy Monitor and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. “Had this electricity been absorbed, the additional power supply could have met all demand growth and allowed coal power generation to fall,” analysts said. The problem, analysts say, is that China lacks the transmission infrastructure necessary to ferry its abundant clean energy from where it is generated to where it is needed. Also stymying the consumption of clean energy is a policy that guarantees the purchase of electricity from newly built coal power plants. Despite a pledge to shift away from coal, China continues to permit and construct new generators. “Coal capacity is still growing because of legacy approvals and policy protections, even as plants run fewer hours and large volumes of clean electricity go unused,” said Qi Qin, an analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. The new report finds that China rejected 26.1 percent of its wind and solar output in the first half of this year, far more than official figures would suggest. Other countries with large amounts of renewable energy are also dealing with wasted power. In India, clean power capacity just surpassed fossil fuel capacity for the first time, but transmission infrastructure has yet to catch up. On a single day in March, India wasted 34 gigawatt-hours of clean electricity, enough to power about 5 million homes, according to an analysis from the think tank Ember. The core of the problem, analysts said, “is a growing mismatch between the pace of renewable energy development and the readiness of the transmission infrastructure.”