AfewUniversesBelowNormal

Most powerful storm of my lifetime happened last year and I actually got struck by lightning. 20-50 branches of real lightning was striking every 1-2 seconds. Multiple pulses, dark swirling clouds, all. Besides that, the climate for severe weather has really changed in this area since the early 2000s. For example, it's almost May and there hasn't been a storm and it really hasn't been close. It has been a cold pattern but where are the cumulus clouds? In the 1990s it was also much different. 

Neutral

Models bring back -PNA in Pacific now. You don't see this in new developing El Nino's

Definitely El Nino, subsurface is leading indicator

It will probably be an above average temperature Summer. 

I remember someone said the Kelvin wave during La Nina as strong as preceded rises to at least +Neutral even though the net effect was a cooler, more La Nina-like subsurface. And a monster -PNA for a few weeks. I thought this was interesting because it verified, the subsurface warming in the east is movement from that Kelvin Wave. It happened before the La Nina peaked is my point. 

I always always make the point that the subsurface is a better indicator than the surface. This is yet another example of it. The Northern Hemisphere is transitioning to El Nino now, with the subsurface Ninoish and the surface not.  

Subsurface is +3 in El Nino-warm area, and Nino 3.4 is still negative

Check out the progression of storm 4-20 to 4-23, very El Nino-ish

There is a pretty good signal of negative North Atlantic Tripole right now. Historically, the Spring is a great time to correlate Atlantic SSTs with hurricane season activity. 1969,1995, 1998, 2005, 2010 were the highest +NTA Spring's and the average #storms for these years is about 20. El Nino also looks like a sure things, so I'd go over/under on number named storms 12. 

I think it will be a basin wide El Nino. Right now it looks like Weak El Nino, but odds of Moderate aren't far behind. Very low chance for strong, ~5%

Yup, good call. I stated in the initial post 500mb was measurement for this, because that is the SST correlation. 

Subsurface is a good indicator in April/May

85% chance this crosses Weak El Nino threshold in the weeklies by the Summer

Subsurface trends early 2018 has 7 analogs.. 3 went El Nino, 4 were Neutral. The way it's going, I would guess Weak or low end Moderate El Nino as a max, about the same % chance for Neutral, and slight chance we go back to Weak Nina in the Fall.

Hurricane season is probably active with a lot of US misses.

Neutral NAO, but really I might call this slightly negative

Hadley Cells expanded north, Polar Vortex shifted

Next year might be El Nino so that would be interesting with how warm N Hemisphere SSTs were this Winter. 

I would think in a 1000 year period the largest snowfall would happen in the Southeast, US. probably Florida

21 hours ago, Harry Perry said:

Blocking.... anyone? Plenty to go around. 

 

Theres one of two things that will probably happen when and if this pattern breaks - and one would highly favor the sub. Either this blocking stays put and we carry on through a very chilly spring/early summer (near record breaking if all stays put... yuck)... OR we get a pattern change and we will make a sudden change from 30’s and 40’s, to 70’s and 80’s within a weeks time. The good about that is the amount of cold air that will still be to the north - thus a very good severe weather season. 

 

Hard to say what will happen though. With any luck blocking will stay in place and it’ll be in the 50’s for Memorial Day. 

Definitely warm when breaks

A below average cold season

The +PNA is legit with ENSO subsurface right now. 

This is some pretty awesome cold for April. Wonder if it verifies.