michsnowfreak Posted 10 hours ago Share Posted 10 hours ago 13 minutes ago, michsnowfreak said: Even though that is the far NW tip of upper Michigan, it is still extremely rare to see snowflakes on September 4th. Its almost funny...thats literally a 4-month window between the end of one season and the start of the next lol. In winter though, unless you live in the Great Lakes you wont understand how common it is to see flakes flying constantly. Even in SE MI outside the snowbelt, Im like an owl looking outside for those first flakes in Oct or Nov, but by mid-winter its almost like youre immune to the harmless flurries or light snow showers falling all the time. The key to a great winter Great Lakes-wide is an excellent LES AND excellent synoptic pattern. Heres a good example.... Last winter, 2024-25, Detroit & Boston, two cities with similar snowfall averages (but vastly different climos) saw similarly below avg snowfall. In Detroit at least, I can confirm the winter was colder & drier than anticipated. Fortunately the snowcover held up well. Detroit saw 28.7" & Boston 28.1". From Nov-Apr, a trace or more of snow fell on 80 days at Detroit...and 29 days at Boston. Mood flakes in the Great Lakes are always a nice touch, but a synoptic pattern is still important for those outside the belts. Now, in the true snow belts of upper MI, where few people actually live, being a snowfall observer would honestly be a full time job in winter. You can get measurable snow every day for months on end. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kazimirkai Posted 9 hours ago Share Posted 9 hours ago 21 hours ago, donsutherland1 said: Here's how La Niñas transition (using New York City's data) following cooler than normal and warmer than normal Septembers: In general, warmer Septembers are often followed by milder and less snowy winters. Cooler Septembers slightly favor colder winters (especially January, possibly due to more persistent forcing) with greater snowfall potential. If the average annual temperature has been increasing over time, wouldn't you expect warm Septembers and warm winters to correlate (or warm any warm month with warm winters for that matter) during a warming climate? The majority of the cold-september-cold-winter cases are from before 2000 whereas more of the warm-september-warm-winter cases are from after. Would this not just be evidence that years as a whole are getting warmer? 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluewave Posted 9 hours ago Share Posted 9 hours ago 51 minutes ago, michsnowfreak said: Even though that is the far NW tip of upper Michigan, it is still extremely rare to see snowflakes on September 4th. Its almost funny...thats literally a 4-month window between the end of one season and the start of the next lol. In winter though, unless you live in the Great Lakes you wont understand how common it is to see flakes flying constantly. Even in SE MI outside the snowbelt, Im like an owl looking outside for those first flakes in Oct or Nov, but by mid-winter its almost like youre immune to the harmless flurries or light snow showers falling all the time. The key to a great winter Great Lakes-wide is an excellent LES AND excellent synoptic pattern. It’s good to see some areas doing this well with these big Pacific Jet extensions in recent years. Looks like the strong -IOD forcing lead to the jet extension and wave breaking event. Record warmth in Western Canada with record high 500mb height anomalies. Then the record low 500mb heights over the Western Great Lakes leading to the very early snowfall. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kazimirkai Posted 9 hours ago Share Posted 9 hours ago 1 hour ago, snowman19 said: Does anyone know the last time the EC forecasted a cold and snowy winter here? Serious question Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anthonymm Posted 9 hours ago Share Posted 9 hours ago 1 hour ago, snowman19 said: Powerful ridge over Alaska. If that actually plays out there is no way for us to be mild. 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowman19 Posted 9 hours ago Share Posted 9 hours ago 1 minute ago, anthonymm said: Powerful ridge over Alaska. If that actually plays out there is no way for us to be mild. Lol That’s an Aleutian ridge not an Alaskan ridge Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anthonymm Posted 9 hours ago Share Posted 9 hours ago 24 minutes ago, kazimirkai said: Does anyone know the last time the EC forecasted a cold and snowy winter here? Serious question It never does. But then again, that almost never happens now, so it ends up being right most of the time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anthonymm Posted 9 hours ago Share Posted 9 hours ago 8 minutes ago, snowman19 said: Lol That’s an Aleutian ridge not an Alaskan ridge So blowtorch 22-23 style winter incoming? 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GaWx Posted 8 hours ago Share Posted 8 hours ago 22 minutes ago, anthonymm said: So blowtorch 22-23 style winter incoming? It’s very hard to predict with confidence how the upcoming winter will be this far out. But I will say that pretty close to normal temperatures (based on 1991-2020 averages) in your area (NE US) are quite possible this DJF. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
donsutherland1 Posted 8 hours ago Share Posted 8 hours ago 1 hour ago, kazimirkai said: If the average annual temperature has been increasing over time, wouldn't you expect warm Septembers and warm winters to correlate (or warm any warm month with warm winters for that matter) during a warming climate? The majority of the cold-september-cold-winter cases are from before 2000 whereas more of the warm-september-warm-winter cases are from after. Would this not just be evidence that years as a whole are getting warmer? Good question. I posted the actual data, because even when the data is detrended for the warming, one still finds similar outcomes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GaWx Posted 8 hours ago Share Posted 8 hours ago On 9/1/2025 at 7:39 AM, mitchnick said: 3 month temp average off the latest Cansips. Fwiw, Cansips has a Niño developing by next summer, but it's record with long term Enso forecasts ain't so hot. Indeed, Mitch! Check out this poor CANSIPS ENSO verification: 8/31/24 run for Aug ‘25 had Modoki Niño look 7/31/25 run for Aug ‘25 asks “what Modoki Nino?” 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
donsutherland1 Posted 7 hours ago Share Posted 7 hours ago Here's how the ECMWF seasonal forecasts changed: August 2025: September 2025: For perspective, here's where things stood last September for Winter 2024-2025, along with the actual outcome: 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowman19 Posted 7 hours ago Share Posted 7 hours ago 2 minutes ago, donsutherland1 said: Here's how the ECMWF seasonal forecasts changed: August 2025: September 2025: For perspective, here's where things stood last September for Winter 2024-2025, along with the actual outcome: The UKMO has actually been doing very well. Curious to see what it shows when it updates 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowman19 Posted 5 hours ago Share Posted 5 hours ago Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MJO812 Posted 5 hours ago Share Posted 5 hours ago 3 hours ago, anthonymm said: So blowtorch 22-23 style winter incoming? We are only in September. Winter outlooks by the models and people for the past few years haven't been good. Grain of salt this far out 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhiEaglesfan712 Posted 4 hours ago Share Posted 4 hours ago FWIW, the last 2 -IODs that were as strong as this year torched in November-February. The only difference is that (outside of Baltimore and DC), we got the blizzard in mid-March 2017, otherwise 16-17 would have been a snow shutout like 22-23. The big difference this time around is that we had a cool August (2016 and 2022 had record warm Augusts). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anthonymm Posted 4 hours ago Share Posted 4 hours ago 27 minutes ago, PhiEaglesfan712 said: FWIW, the last 2 -IODs that were as strong as this year torched in November-February. The only difference is that (outside of Baltimore and DC), we got the blizzard in mid-March 2017, otherwise 16-17 would have been a snow shutout like 22-23. The big difference this time around is that we had a cool August (2016 and 2022 had record warm Augusts). Not true, nyc would have gotten 20" even without the march storm. Only slightly below avg. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GaWx Posted 3 hours ago Share Posted 3 hours ago 2 hours ago, snowman19 said: The last few GEFS and EPS runs have forecasted MJO in the relatively favorable phases of 2, 1, and 8 through Sept. 19 and this would probably extend through at least the rest of Sept per longer term model guidance and climo: 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mitchnick Posted 3 hours ago Share Posted 3 hours ago 3 hours ago, donsutherland1 said: Here's how the ECMWF seasonal forecasts changed: August 2025: September 2025: For perspective, here's where things stood last September for Winter 2024-2025, along with the actual outcome: Not that it matters at this point, but the monthly temp forecast isn't that bad for the NE. It's pretty rudimentary, but you get the jist of it that the 3 month averages of +1-2C is likely closer to +1 than +2. Precip for the 3 months is within the average range for many on the east coast as well during DJF, while JFM is average for everyone. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michsnowfreak Posted 3 hours ago Share Posted 3 hours ago 4 hours ago, donsutherland1 said: Here's how the ECMWF seasonal forecasts changed: August 2025: September 2025: For perspective, here's where things stood last September for Winter 2024-2025, along with the actual outcome: Pretty big fail last winter. 3 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GaWx Posted 2 hours ago Share Posted 2 hours ago The new Euro has DJF Nino 3.4 much cooler than last month with it at ~-0.50 vs last month’s -0.08: 8/1/25 Euro prog for DJF: -0.08 9/1/25 Euro prog for DJF: ~-0.50 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GaWx Posted 2 hours ago Share Posted 2 hours ago 56 minutes ago, michsnowfreak said: Pretty big fail last winter. Do you or does anyone else have a link that can be provided to past years’ Euro Sept 2m temperature forecasts going back however far they do for the respective upcoming DJFs for North America or the US? Edit: I found it kind of sort of. See post below. @donsutherland1@mitchnick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
donsutherland1 Posted 2 hours ago Share Posted 2 hours ago 29 minutes ago, michsnowfreak said: Pretty big fail last winter. It was. Notice how similar the map looks to last September's outlook for the past winter. I suspect that the similarity reveals that the expected ENSO state plays a disproportionate role in the seasonal forecasts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GaWx Posted 2 hours ago Share Posted 2 hours ago 34 minutes ago, GaWx said: Do you or does anyone else have a link that can be provided to past years’ Euro Sept 2m temperature forecasts going back however far they do for the respective upcoming DJFs for North America or the US? @donsutherland1@mitchnick I just found Sept 2M forecasts for Dec and Jan individually though not Sept for DJF: https://charts.ecmwf.int/products/seasonal_system5_standard_2mtm?area=NAME&base_time=202509010000&stats=ensm&valid_time=202510020000 @donsutherland1@mitchnick 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mitchnick Posted 2 hours ago Share Posted 2 hours ago 35 minutes ago, GaWx said: The new Euro has DJF Nino 3.4 much cooler than last month with it at ~-0.50 vs last month’s -0.08: 8/1/25 Euro prog for DJF: -0.08 9/1/25 Euro prog for DJF: ~-0.50 Snowman19 seeing this post. 3 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
donsutherland1 Posted 1 hour ago Share Posted 1 hour ago 23 minutes ago, GaWx said: I just found Sept 2M forecasts for Dec and Jan individually though not Sept for DJF: https://charts.ecmwf.int/products/seasonal_system5_standard_2mtm?area=NAME&base_time=202509010000&stats=ensm&valid_time=202510020000 @donsutherland1@mitchnick Here you go: 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluewave Posted 1 hour ago Share Posted 1 hour ago 1 hour ago, michsnowfreak said: Pretty big fail last winter. The much below average snowfall forecast from the seasonal models run during the fall of 2024 from Philly to Boston did work out. They even got the very low snowfall correct for Chicago. That’s what most on here follow anyway. A continuation of the warm storm tracks through the Great Lakes theme. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FPizz Posted 1 hour ago Share Posted 1 hour ago 18 minutes ago, bluewave said: The much below average snowfall forecast from the seasonal models run during the fall of 2024 from Philly to Boston did work out. They even got the very low snowfall correct for Chicago. That’s what most on here follow anyway. A continuation of the warm storm tracks through the Great Lakes theme. Wasn't last year more a product of it being dry over warm storm tracks? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluewave Posted 45 minutes ago Share Posted 45 minutes ago 13 minutes ago, FPizz said: Wasn't last year more a product of it being dry over warm storm tracks? It was the warm storm tracks from Philly to Boston that resulted in the very low snowfall. Very strong Southeast ridge and Pacific Jet on the days when most of the precipitation fell. This has been the main theme since 2018-2019. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roardog Posted 23 minutes ago Share Posted 23 minutes ago 57 minutes ago, bluewave said: The much below average snowfall forecast from the seasonal models run during the fall of 2024 from Philly to Boston did work out. They even got the very low snowfall correct for Chicago. That’s what most on here follow anyway. A continuation of the warm storm tracks through the Great Lakes theme. I’m pretty sure the model was forecasting all of that below average snow because it had a country wide blowtorch. So it was right for the wrong reason pretty much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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