2025-2026 ENSO

[40/70 Benchmark]

On 8/22/2025 at 1:19 PM, snowman19 said:

I can see the -EPO, the +PNA not so much, especially since it’s a 2nd year -ENSO/-PDO. Not saying no +PNA but IMO it will be limited 

I think it will be variable...slightly negative in the mean, which is fine.

[40/70 Benchmark]

On 8/25/2025 at 9:42 AM, GaWx said:

ACE is now at 37.14 with just a little more to be added from Fernand. This puts 2024 13th highest of the last 75 (83 percentile). The 1951-2024 avg through today is only 22.
 
 However, Invest 90L headed to the W Caribbean is now considered dead. Overall, the models including Euro Weeklies continue to look quite a bit quieter than climo through the 1st half of Sept. If that verifies, we’d quickly fall back down to at least NN ACE. From that point on, it would still remain to be seen whether or not PhiEaglesfan will be right about Erin being about the only big deal this season. I’ll be more than happy to give him kudos if he were to be right. But there’s still such a long way to go, especially in a cold ENSO season, which are often backended. In addition, recent seasons have been getting more backended, quite possibly related to GW.

I thought that was one of the more silly calls I have seen in a while.

[40/70 Benchmark]

On 8/25/2025 at 11:08 PM, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

I'm so interested to see if we get a cold December this year, because strong -QBO/weak -ENSO analogs strongly support it. I remember those similar 2 conditions in the Fall of 2005, we used the 1989 analog, and it worked out great that Winter. Besides that, there is nothing strongly anomalously warm about the global pattern right now, wrt to previous years. I am going to be in the 70s for highs something like 13/14 August days, which is unusual. We had a warm up in June, but cold H5 was overtop of it, so it was a strong +NAO driven warm up. We aren't just popping ridging out of nowhere, like we did a lot 2020-2024. For all this about 2nd year El Nino's being so warm in the global pattern, you don't hear much about 2nd year La Nina's, and the cooling effect. I think since late November last year it's been a cooler US pattern, relative to global warming and all. Will be interesting to see if it lasts into the Winter. Analogs say that odds are starting to become in that favor, the more we get these cooler patterns through the Fall. 

(Long winded) Mic drop-

[40/70 Benchmark]

On 8/26/2025 at 8:05 AM, bluewave said:

Maybe you don’t understand the difference between climate normals and rankings. Normals keep getting warmer with each 10 year update. So it takes a smaller warm departure for a top ten warmest month or season using the warmest 1991-2020 climate normals. 

I don't care about the rankings. Most weather circles use departures based on current climo.

[40/70 Benchmark]

On 8/26/2025 at 10:10 AM, Cobalt said:

Are you telling me that this wording

Wasn't meant to push any sort of agenda that this Summer was not as warm as others claim? bluewave brought up that you're comparing against the warmest 30 year average, which is a completely valid criticism. From what I can tell June's "only +1.3" is 13th warmest out of 136 years.

Words like "only" or "barely AN" are only applicable if we isolate the current 30 year average as the baseline for absolute warmth or cold. That is way more narrow of a scope than what bluewave did, comparing to the entire range of years. Comparing against 136 years is a way better benchmark than just 30.

 

 

 

 

I don't see why it matters unless someone is unconvinced of CC. We all understand that the world has warmed....but we measure based on current climo.

[40/70 Benchmark]

On 8/26/2025 at 11:23 AM, Cobalt said:

Is that not exactly you're doing by using just the years within the 1991-2020 average and nothing else? If not changing the standards, it's focusing only on the ones that push your notions. You're dropping 100 of the 136 years of records because they make this year's averages seem warmer by comparison.

Would you look back on June 2025's +1.3 as a "cooler" month just because the 2001-2030 averages might place it as a -0.2, even if it ranks 20th warmest of 136 years? 

It's the established climo protocol. I don't think using that represents a tacit denial of CC. Do me a favor and voice concerns over in the CC thread.

[PhiEaglesfan712]

15 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

I though that was one of the more silly calls I have seen in a while.

You never know, though. 2007 was a strong la nina, and had Felix at around this time (the second big storm, after Dean). You'd almost be certain that another major hurricane was going to happen the rest of the way. But it didn't happen.

1992 was a one-storm wonder. 2007 was a two-storm wonder. I think we're headed for this type of year, rather than a 2005 or 2020. Not every hurricane season is going to be active. 

[40/70 Benchmark]

4 minutes ago, PhiEaglesfan712 said:

You never know, though. 2007 was a strong la nina, and had Felix at around this time (the second big storm, after Dean). You'd almost be certain that another major hurricane was going to happen the rest of the way. But it didn't happen.

1992 was a one-storm wonder. 2007 was a two-storm wonder. I think we're headed for this type of year, rather than a 2005 or 2020. Not every hurricane season is going to be active. 

Yup...just my opinion. We'll see, but Like Chris said, late seasons have been active and protracted.

PS: Not every hurricane season is going to be active, nor is every active season going to be 2005 or 2020.

[snowman19]

17 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Yup...just my opinion. We'll see, but Like Chris said, late seasons have been active and protracted.

PS: Not every hurricane season is going to be active, nor is every active season going to be 2005 or 2020.

There’s people on twitter who think that just because it’s a La Niña it HAS to be above normal in ACE and named storms. As we all know on here, that’s just not the case, just like it doesn’t HAVE to be below normal when there’s an El Niño 

[raindancewx]

One thing I look at entering the Fall is the overall level of heat south of the United States. When you get warm ups ahead of storms in the Fall/Winter from much deeper heat sources it can really kill the cold shots in terms of the averaging out of the monthly/seasonal temps.

From 1961-2024, the tendency for the top Atlantic hurricane seasons is for the West Coast to be pretty warm Jun-Aug. We haven't had that this year. There have been pretty cold periods on the West Coast this summer. We don't appear to be heading to a top ten type season based on the composite.

2005 has a passing similarity but had different placements for the subtropical features. But really 1995/1999 are the only two of the ten super seasons that have any kind of cold Summer pattern at all for the West Coast.

The precipitation pattern is fairly similar but much wetter in the Plains and a bit drier in the East. But a lot of these active hurricane seasons have storms hitting the east/gulf to drive up their totals in Jun-Aug, which we haven't had this year.

The precip pattern difference looks like 2025 is the active hurricane seasons, but on a spoke centered on FL, with the core of the moisture rotated counterclockwise toward the Plans. To me that implies completely different positioning of the Bermuda High from the hyper active seasons. But we'll see.

[GaWx]

9 hours ago, snowman19 said:

There’s people on twitter who think that just because it’s a La Niña it HAS to be above normal in ACE and named storms. As we all know on here, that’s just not the case, just like it doesn’t HAVE to be below normal when there’s an El Niño 

-Indeed, only 11 of 15 La Niña seasons (I’m including 2024) since 1995 had well AN active era ACE though that’s still near 3/4 of them.

-For neutral: only 1/3 had well AN active ACE

-For El Niño: only 2/9 had well AN ACE

-So, La Niña has been associated with the highest odds by far of a high ACE season

[so_whats_happening]

 

 

Did a very quick rather busy chart on excel. Basically it is the JJA ENSO data from CPC in blue and Ace numbers for the season in orange. Now this doesn't help explain where we came from like previous winter may have been Strong Nino and we crashed to weak nina by summer as an example which could play a role. This is for every year from 1950 to 2024.

Edit: Had to fix it so you could see every year. Shame it does not have dots for Ace to see the years better.

[BlizzardWx]

I know several consider last winter to be a top analog, but there really has been a lot of change in the SSTA pattern in just about every basin. The observed pattern also feels very different. We had a high of just 70 F today in Tulsa for the 5th coldest on record, which is on top of a cool and extremely wet summer...very different from last year at least at this juncture. 

[so_whats_happening]

Also wanted to post the latest for July and August via TAO on the subsurface look between 2N and 2S.

 

[snowman19]

4 hours ago, BlizzardWx said:

I know several consider last winter to be a top analog, but there really has been a lot of change in the SSTA pattern in just about every basin. The observed pattern also feels very different. We had a high of just 70 F today in Tulsa for the 5th coldest on record, which is on top of a cool and extremely wet summer...very different from last year at least at this juncture. 

I agree. The Niña is tipping its hand much earlier this year than last, there’s a -IOD event now and the NW Pacific is even warmer. There’s also a very pronounced -PMM and we have a deep -AAM, whereas last year was very +AAM/Nino like. Last year by this time we had a parade of recurving tropical and extratropical storms training over the inferno SSTS off Japan cooling/upwelling them, not happening this time around. In fact the -PDO is even stronger now with SSTS of 11 degrees F above normal in that area….that’s staggering. And obvious big changes in the Atlantic with the big persistent cold pool south of Greenland and up Davis Straight