GaWx

Check out today’s GEFS AO prog, a pretty notable change downward vs yesterday:

Hey Charlie, I don’t have any links to provide right now. I’m going off of what a pro met. has posted elsewhere a number of times for years. Also, don’t forget that it isn’t just the CO2 Fertilizer Effect that’s beneficial. It’s also the longer growing seasons.

Who broke the Bleaklies? Whereas I haven’t been able to get them all evening, I did look at the WxBell interpretation of them. That suggests they’ve cooled closer to the run from two days ago during several Bleaks fwiw. @MJO812 2/13/26 edit: Bleaklies were finally fixed at ecmwf site

Today was downright chilly! Looking forward to a pretty cold evening walk. Edit: The walk was very enjoyable in the near calm chill with mid 40s. Tomorrow will be another lovely day. Saturday will be a little warmer (~upper 60s high), but with still nice low dewpoints. These are the types of days I dream about during the long monotonous hot and humid summers here.

Some of the crop yield increases were likely helped by better technology, but not nearly all of it. GW/AGW have helped significantly with crop sizes, something often intentionally glossed over

Another positive effect of AGW/GW is regarding the world food supply due to the photosynthesis effect of CO2 as well as longer growing seasons. These favor larger crops/larger global food supply/less starvation. That shouldn’t be ignored in the full objective assessment of AGW/GW, which certainly has significant negative effects. However, there are some good things, too, like fewer deaths from cold as you said and fewer deaths from starvation. These good effects are often glossed over by those wanting to only emphasize the bad effects.

I saw the following image today: I’m not doubting the general accuracy of this. For example, this shows NO record lows at KATL vs 37 record highs since 2020. The last record low there including ties was way back on 9/7/2017! So, the zero record lows is confirmed. A better representation of the SE US to minimize the warming effects of UHI as well as warming from increased traffic on airport runways (big problem at ATL for example) would be to use a rural station like the far N GA small town of Blairsville, GA, which has a pretty long record (back to 1931): Per my counting (hoping I didn’t miscount…if I did it should be only minimally off): Since 2020 including ties, it has had 24 different days with record highs and 7 days with record lows. Since 2010, 65 with highs and 25 with lows Since 2000: 87 with highs and 42 with lows So, of course GW is real. But large cities’ records often cause an exaggeration of the degree of warming. So, it’s important to separate out UHI/airport effects as much as possible. —————— Daily records from here: https://www.weather.gov/wrh/Climate?wfo=ffc

Here there has been accumulating snow in March only 2 times in the modern record: 1993 and 1986. However, there have also been 9 traces, including 1980 and 1960. And way back in 1837, there was the 2nd biggest snow on record on March 3rd. We also had a major ZR/IP on 2/25/1914.

A better representation of the SE US to minimize the warming effects of UHI as well as warming from increased traffic on airport runways (big problem at ATL for example) would be to use a rural station like the far N GA small town of Blairsville, GA, which has a pretty long record (back to 1931): Per my counting (hoping I didn’t miscount…if I did it should be only minimally off): Since 2020 including ties, it has had 24 different days with record highs and 7 days with record lows. Since 2010, 65 with highs and 25 with lows Since 2000: 87 with highs and 42 with lows So, of course GW is real. But large cities’ records often cause an exaggeration of the degree of warming. So, it’s important to separate out UHI/airport effects as much as possible.—————— Daily records from here: https://www.weather.gov/wrh/Climate?wfo=ffc

Agreed. It’s still not warm at all for you as you average NN during this 3 week period on this run. However, that’s a bit warmer than the prior run, which had y’all averaging a little BN. Hoping the next few runs reverse cooler from this in the E US.

This suggests ~0.20/decade 1980-2000 and ~0.24/decade 2000-2020.

Today’s Euro Weeklies are significantly warmer than the last few for the 3 wks 2/23-3/15

Thank you. Y’all predicting no more snow in y’all’s locations down in the SE US with it looking mild next week and with it getting late are obviously very reasonable predictions. But do you expect any more hard freezes? That and cold in general are obviously part of winter, too. Cold without snow is a lot more common than cold w/snow. Even in this warmer era, an average of 4 freezes in March occurs. Do you expect any March freezes in ATL? TIA

What is your definition of “winter is over”? I read this often from various people as if it’s a black and white thing but without them explaining what they mean. Thanks.

The period Feb 1-7, 2026 was in MJO phase 8 as per this image: Using Baltimore again as a proxy for the E US, Feb 1-7 was the coldest La Nina Feb phase 8 on record in terms of both average anomaly and cumulative anomaly. Keep in mind that -It averaged 9 BN. The prior coldest was 7 BN and that was just a one day period. -The cumulative anomaly was 66 BN over the 7 days. The prior largest cumulative Feb phase 8 La Niña anomaly was only 36 BN, which was over a 9 day period in mid Feb of 1999. Comparing this to other Feb MJO phases during La Niña: - This very cold phase 8’s cumulative anomaly of 66 BN is the third largest of all phases with only these two exceeding that: 1. Early Feb of 1996’s phase 3 added up to 84 BN over 7 days 2. Late Feb of 2008’s phase 1 added up to 70 BN over 10 days.

Warmth won’t last per EWs for last few days, including today’s, as SE goes back down to back and forth averaging NN and NE goes back to cold: these are for 2/23-3/1

Hoping after a mild week 2 for an improvement to mainly NN in the SE late month into March!

The chances for an overall Feb -PNA are good as of now with a strong -PNA upcoming. This goes through Feb 24th: AO now rising sharply: NAO is, like the AO, also rising. However, it remains to be seen whether or not this rise will be enough to get the DJF NAO >-0.25, the # I’ve always used to classify a winter as -NAO vs neutral. DJ is at -0.5. In order for DJF to rise above -0.25, the Feb NAO would need to end up >+0.25, which is a decent possibility per this:

Regardless, it’s important for continuity/looking back that we keep most of the posts specifically pertaining to the rest of this cold season in this thread. Besides the lag of ENSO related effects, these threads are obviously about far more than ENSO, itself.

If I get enough time, I’ll analyze the Baltimore daily temperatures for some of the MJO phases in (post) La Niña years in March as a followup to my 20 Feb MJO La Niña MJO phase analysis. If I do, I might start with 8. I’d look at the same 20.

Don, once you adjust normals upward to take into account GW, is deep cold still about as common as it ever was? Example: adjust normals upward by 3F vs what normals were from around 1900. After doing so, is same degree of extreme cold about as common as it was then?

Of course warmest will outpace coldest with global land areas averaging 3F warmer than where the avg was in 1900. If you were to subtract 3F from recent years of records, wouldn’t cold anomalies be on par with warm anomalies?

Pick your model. If one picks Feb 8th ext GEFS like you did (2/9 ext GEFS not out yet), it looks mild. But if one picks the Euro Weeklies, which is a superior model to the GEFS, it isn’t as it’s a mix of AN, NN, and BN. Of course none of them are reliable that far out. But I much prefer the ext Euro over ext GEFS.

Per what the EW have been showing this period (2/17-23) could end up the warmest week in the E 1/3 of the US overall, possibly even in the absolutes in some areas, til at least late March.

The EW week 3/2-8 suggests warmer sneaking back in but not even to the E coast. But afterward, the EW then suggest that that warming, itself, would also be temporary as per what I just posted.