KA WINTER OUTLOOK

[WEATHER53]

Temperatures:Above Average

Snowfall:Average

Rainfall:Above Average

 

Seasonal Temps:+1.3 to +1.7

Monthly: Dec:0 to +1

               Jan:0

              Feb:+4

Snowfall DCA:15"

 

Analog years:1974(5),1984(5), 1992(3)1997(8),2001(2)

 

Believes there will be a major ice storm around 1/15/15

[StudentOfClimatology]

Huh?

[GaWx]

Huh?

 

 "I" means "ice" and lots of it. Get your generator!

 

 Seriously, I'm looking forward to the annual KA forecast, even if it isn't for the SE US, since I think KA has a pretty good record overall and a lot can usually be inferred from it. After all, DC is a lot closer than, say, New England and a good bit closer than even NYC. However, if it is warm, I'll ignore it.

[aldie 22]

I

"

[Huffwx]

Drums please??

[WxUSAF]

This thread is a big tease.  

[Eskimo Joe]

This thread is a big tease.  

Didn't he whiff on the past two years or something?

[WEATHER53]

Didn't he whiff on the past two years or something?

He has misssed 10 years in a row and that's why no one cares. We are waiting however to read yours.

[EastCoast NPZ]

Jeezus, +4F Feb.  Talk about an early spring.  That would be a disaster of a winter.

[AlaskaETC]

Meh, first negative forecast I've seen so far, so not too bad. We'll see..

[Deck Pic]

thanks for posting...hope he is wrong

[mitchnick]

hard to believe you can have 01/02 in the same breath with 92/93 and 97/98

aside from 01/02 and 97/98 being 2 examples of how DC can go without snow during a winter, they were so different ENSO and precip-wise

[WxUSAF]

hard to believe you can have 01/02 in the same breath with 92/93 and 97/98

aside from 01/02 and 97/98 being 2 examples of how DC can go without snow during a winter, they were so different ENSO and precip-wise

Yeah, I'm a bit confused that 2 of the top analogs are the strongest Nino on record and the strongest Nina in the last 4-6 decades (at least).  

[mitchnick]

Yeah, I'm a bit confused that 2 of the top analogs are the strongest Nino on record and the strongest Nina in the last 4-6 decades (at least).  

I guess if you average them out you get a weak NINO!    

[Deck Pic]

Yeah, I'm a bit confused that 2 of the top analogs are the strongest Nino on record and the strongest Nina in the last 4-6 decades (at least).  

 

he has never really been big on indices...even ENSO

[Isotherm]

Well, definitely an interesting perspective on this winter. Guess we shall see. I think I recall Howard saying that he comes up w/ the forecast based upon the previous year's temp/precip profile locally (in addition to usage of extreme events in analoging)?

[mitchnick]

he has never really been big on indices...even ENSO

my recollection is that ENSO is the only one he looks at, but maybe Howard can confirm/deny

[Huffwx]

15 at DCA is near climo... That's not horrible snow wise. Temp wise... Yeah

[WxUSAF]

he has never really been big on indices...even ENSO

Guess not.  

[Deck Pic]

15 at DCA is near climo... That's not horrible snow wise. Temp wise... Yeah

 

DCA has hit 15" in 6 out of the last 30 winters...it is technically "climo" but well above the median of 10-11"

[snowfan]

While I'd be surprised if we had consecutive big AN departure seasons, I admit that 15" for DCA (which may translate to 22-25 for MBY) would disappoint. 

[Bob Chill]

One of the things that kinda sucks about weak or warm neutral enso winters is that they tend to not be wet here very often and even though we associate warm enso to an active southern storm track, the anomalies tell a different story. The deep south, SE and MA were pretty dry during the winters of 79-80, 04-05, 06-07. Of course this is a small dataset and bad practice to draw conclusions on, but it's hard to ignore. I don't really see much evidence showing that weak nino's are favorable for AN precip through the deep south, SE and MA. 

 

This is a composite of warm neutral and weak events since 1950. 

 

 

 

 

Taking the warm neutrals out looks even worse for the SE. 

 

 

I'm starting to think that hitting AN climo snow this year would be another fluke and that enso may not be as big a driver (in our area) of AN precip and/or snow as some people think (unless we pull off a 4th q comback to mod status). I still don't really know what to think about this winter. It's awfully muddy right now imo.  

[Ian]

A +4 Feb would be awesome. Go KA!

[WEATHER53]

We consider ENSO index prioritization something of a cart before the horse.  I can say that once we have the occurrent weather analogs in place, if we think it is, for example, going to be a moderate el nino then we would add some extra to the snow accumulations.  Too many people try and take, for example, a pending moderate el nino and make everthing fit into that box. We do not do that.

[WEATHER53]

thanks for posting...hope he is wrong

A zero January is decent actually.  He has had some +3 to +5 for all three months and those, when correct, were really horrible winters. For him, a 0 to +1 Dec and 0 Jan really is not much of a mild call, February different matter.

[millwx]

One of the things that kinda sucks about weak or warm neutral enso winters is that they tend to not be wet here very often and even though we associate warm enso to an active southern storm track, the anomalies tell a different story. The deep south, SE and MA were pretty dry during the winters of 79-80, 04-05, 06-07. Of course this is a small dataset and bad practice to draw conclusions on, but it's hard to ignore. I don't really see much evidence showing that weak nino's are favorable for AN precip through the deep south, SE and MA. 

 

This is a composite of warm neutral and weak events since 1950. 

 

 

weakensoprecip.JPG

 

 

Taking the warm neutrals out looks even worse for the SE. 

 

 

I'm starting to think that hitting AN climo snow this year would be another fluke and that enso may not be as big a driver (in our area) of AN precip and/or snow as some people think (unless we pull off a 4th q comback to mod status). I still don't really know what to think about this winter. It's awfully muddy right now imo.  

 

Bob,

 

You can get a bigger sample by going back further... though, in doing so, you'd need to de-trend the data to remove background trending/oscillation (which is tricky, as there are multiple ways to do this).  I've done this in the manner that I've found to be most common.  By going back further and confining the analysis to ONLY weak El Nino events (not including neutral-warm, since there seems to be SOME increasing consensus that we'll be in a weak Nino for the winter), you do see a better (wetter) signal... albeit BARELY... it's still dry over the interior.  But the high population (I95ish) corridor is pushed closer to normal:

 

 

It's certainly not great at all... merely normal.  But it's a LITTLE better than the map you showed.  Besides just a larger sample, my main difference was excluding the neutral-warm years.  So, basically, getting into a Nino does help... though you are correct, it doesn't necessarily push you "above" that easily... just back towards normal (while neutral-warm seasons are below normal on precip).

 

Normal precip would yield above normal snowfall if the ENSO state can dominate temps (not sure it will, as there are plenty of other factors... but just sticking to your ENSO argument here), because those exact same winters had the following temperature anomalies (in the mean):

 

 

*NOTE:  I'm using the very long-term climo; this is necessary since I'm using analog seasons outside of the standard 30yr climo period.  If one doesn't use a similar climo period as the analog seasons they're analyzing, they may simply be plotting up the long-term trends or oscillations.

 

So, a weak El Nino = normal precip with below normal temps.  That wouldn't seem to be favorable for a blockbuster snowfall season, but it's certainly not bad.

[GaWx]

One of the things that kinda sucks about weak or warm neutral enso winters is that they tend to not be wet here very often and even though we associate warm enso to an active southern storm track, the anomalies tell a different story. The deep south, SE and MA were pretty dry during the winters of 79-80, 04-05, 06-07. Of course this is a small dataset and bad practice to draw conclusions on, but it's hard to ignore. I don't really see much evidence showing that weak nino's are favorable for AN precip through the deep south, SE and MA. 

 

This is a composite of warm neutral and weak events since 1950. 

 

 

weakensoprecip.JPG

 

 

Taking the warm neutrals out looks even worse for the SE. 

 

 

I'm starting to think that hitting AN climo snow this year would be another fluke and that enso may not be as big a driver (in our area) of AN precip and/or snow as some people think (unless we pull off a 4th q comback to mod status). I still don't really know what to think about this winter. It's awfully muddy right now imo.  

 

Bob,

 

**Edit: While I was typing my post, I see millwx was posting something kind of similar.

 

Since you mentioned the SE: Weak Ninos interestingly have still averaged 130% of normal snowfall at ATL even though precip. has averaged a bit below average. (To be fair this has been helped mainly because of weak Nino's of the 1950's and further back.) Why? Because they have been so cold on average even though three of the 8 solidly cold ones since 1900 had relatively little wintry precip (solid cold usually needs +PDO and -NAO). In Atlanta, the overall cold (on avg.) has had much more impact than the slightly below normal precip. (on average) regarding average snowfall during weak El Nino's since snows are so much more infrequent there:

 

Weak Nino DJF temp.'s:

 

Weak Nino DJF precip.:

[AvantHiatus]

A +4 Feb would be awesome. Go KA!

Early bonus storms and 1.5 PWATS ftw.

[AlaskaETC]

Early bonus storms and 1.5 PWATS ftw.

 

[Bob Chill]

I think I omitted an important part of what I was trying to say. The MA lives and dies by storm track more than precip anomalies. We get about 12" of precip a winter and we consider ourselves lucky if just 2 of those inches fall as snow. But looking at those precip anomalies implies to me (and I hope I'm wrong) that the southern storm track is not nearly as prevalent during weak ninos. Pull a composite for mod ninos and it shows a very different story. That's more than what I was getting at. Weak nino's don't seem to correlate nearly as well to a southern storm track as mod ones. 

 

 

I looked at DC snowfall history for all of the years posted above and again, it's just not that encouraging at all. Only 1 winter (77-78) cracked 20" until you go all the way back to 39-40 (25"). 77-78 as saved by a big march so the DJF period only had 14". 1904 was the only blockbuster year and I find it hard to have any confidence in data that old. 

 

Persistence in the MA since 1940 has been to have crappy snowfall totals during weak nino events. It's hard to bet against that at this lead. Our winter here will likely be decided by the AO/NAO behavior moreso than enso imo. Maybe that will become more clear once we enter Nov.