2025-2026 ENSO

[40/70 Benchmark]

1 hour ago, PhiEaglesfan712 said:

La nina by itself isn't always bad. Just as a deep -IOD isn't always bad by itself. But those two things in combination almost certainly spells a cooked winter.

If you have a la nina, you need a +IOD or near neutral IOD to have a chance. If you have a deep -IOD, you need an el nino or near ENSO neutral.

La nina and deep -IOD is just not going to work. Unless you're looking for a blowtorch winter and very little snow.

Not the case for New England. You tend to speak as though your climo applies to everyone.

[snowman19]

[FPizz]

6 minutes ago, snowman19 said:

 

[GaWx]

3 minutes ago, FPizz said:

I have to admit that it would be funny to see the NE Pacific cool back more than the W Pac and see how weenie forecasters would then spin it. Of course @snowman19would have a blast!

[snowman19]

1 minute ago, GaWx said:

I have to admit that it would be funny to see the NE Pacific cool back more than the W Pac and see how weenie forecasters would then spin it.

Just this morning a pro met (no, not JB) said the warm blob was strengthening. Funny how some live in the Land of Make Believe

[anthonymm]

10 hours ago, GaWx said:

Was this one posted before? I get them all mixed up with their typically fictitious southern battle zones and NE blizzard watches and huge snowstorms and N Plains polar vortices and amazingly enough always warm/dry in the W where E US wx weenies conveniently don’t care:

 

https://www.powder.com/news/east-coast-blizzard-watch-winter

*Edit: I just noticed that this is the one posted yesterday that I even commented on lol. I told you guys I get these mixed up and this is proof!

Lol yeah the pattern in recent years has been the total opposite in fact. Cold out west, blowtorch in the east.

[anthonymm]

17 minutes ago, FPizz said:

Yeah the winter pattern is set. The warm blob's gonna go away, the western pac will boil. We'll get a horrible zonal pac jet that floods the east with warm mild air, and the rockies and west will get freezing cold and snowstorms every day. 22-23 / 23-24 repeat, but possibly worse.

[snowman19]

If this dry pattern continues into October and it looks like it will, my fear is that this drought has a chance of becoming worse than last fall….that dry pattern didn’t start until after mid-August, this one started at the tail end of July

[roardog]

I think these warm blobs are nothing more than a result of the pattern and not an influencer of the pattern. I think it could help feedback but no way can it overpower other influencing factors IMO.

[bluewave]

I think the warm blobs can begin to exert some influence on the pattern when they become anchored to the subsurface like we are seeing now across most of the WPAC to North of Hawaii.

Last winter we had one of the deepest troughs for the last 20 years emerge to the east of Japan. The surface SSTs didn’t cool very much compared to past deep trough instances since the subsurface had accumulated to much heat. So the strong gradient remained between the area east of Japan and Siberia. This lead to frequent jet extensions.

Plus when the record SSTs are located near the Kuroshio Current in the WPAC and Gulf Stream in the Atlantic, they can help to initiate Rossby wave breaking which have a big influence on hemispheric circulation patterns. 
 

https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/GODAS/ocean_briefing_gif/global_ocean_monitoring_current.pdf

 

[EasternLI]

2 hours ago, GaWx said:

I have to admit that it would be funny to see the NE Pacific cool back more than the W Pac and see how weenie forecasters would then spin it. Of course @snowman19would have a blast!

The funny part to me is that 2013 actually did do that. Similar timing. There seems to be this notion in here that there was this static warm pool in the NE Pacific for months on end that year. When that was not the case from what I've been seeing looking back at the data.

 

[MJO812]

6 hours ago, anthonymm said:

Yeah the winter pattern is set. The warm blob's gonna go away, the western pac will boil. We'll get a horrible zonal pac jet that floods the east with warm mild air, and the rockies and west will get freezing cold and snowstorms every day. 22-23 / 23-24 repeat, but possibly worse.

[BlizzardWx]

The pattern the next two weeks will support additional cooling in the GOA with warming or at least maintenance of the warmth in the west Pacific. Beyond that who knows. But as others noted, the NE Pacific warm pool did collapse in October 2013 and didn't rebuild all the way until December. Obviously that was the result of the pattern though, rather than the SSTAs driving anything.  

[so_whats_happening]

13 hours ago, Typhoon Tip said:

Is there a way to actually do that?   I've always just done it the hard way, but ultimately gave up when the thread's hundos pages deep... 

I feel like there was a way but maybe that was a different forum I was on. So true though 100+ pages... im not going through that.

13 hours ago, GaWx said:

For all practical purposes, it’s already weak La Niña:

 The RONI equivalent daily is likely already well down into weak Niña range (subtract at least ~0.25C from the raw 3.4 SST anomaly based on the slowly reducing but still persistent RONI minus ONI)

 Below are some straight 3.4 anomalies (caution that CDAS has typically been too cold but sometimes CRW is slightly too warm): based on these four, alone, I’d think the raw daily anomaly is likely ~-0.4 to -0.5 meaning ~-0.7 for RONI equivalent:

 
 

 

 

 Buoys:

CDAS almost looks representative to RONI output compared to OISST and CRW.

[michsnowfreak]

12 hours ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Not the case for New England. You tend to speak as though your climo applies to everyone.

Exactly. I enjoy that we have people from all different areas posting. And i would expect that everyone is most concerned about their own area. But have to be careful to apply localized logic in a broadbrush sense.

As I've said many times, theres no question that snow lovers in the Great Lakes would prefer a la nina any day over el nino. Of course ENSO itself is only one piece of the puzzle, but theres enough history to see what is the better enso state for the winter enthusiast in MI. 

Of course it will still snow here multiple times in an El Nino...but it will be a much quieter winter than a Nina. The full winter as a whole seems to hold more importance for the midwest, Lakes, and new England in terms of how we view it, whereas the coastal areas into the mid Atlantic are all about what pattern can give them a monster storm. 

[snowman19]

I mentioned it a few days ago but the WPAC SST alignment matches previous years that saw a lot of +WPO. This -PDO cycle has been different than the last major -PDO cycle we saw (1940’s-1970’s), where where we now have the western North Pacific boiling, unlike back then

[40/70 Benchmark]

1 hour ago, snowman19 said:

I mentioned it a few days ago but the WPAC SST alignment matches previous years that saw a lot of +WPO. This -PDO cycle has been different than the last major -PDO cycle we saw (1940’s-1970’s), where where we now have the western North Pacific boiling, unlike back then
 

I agree with this. This is why although I think we will do "better" than many recent seasons, there is still a "cap" on cold/snowfall potential. While I do believe that 2013-2014 is a vaible analog in some respects, I do not expect a carbon copy of that season, and what you have just pointed out is a large reason why.

[jm1220]

1 hour ago, snowman19 said:

I mentioned it a few days ago but the WPAC SST alignment matches previous years that saw a lot of +WPO. This -PDO cycle has been different than the last major -PDO cycle we saw (1940’s-1970’s), where where we now have the western North Pacific boiling, unlike back then
 

Until that W PAC meaningfully changes it’s very difficult to be hopeful south of I-90 for a decent winter. Maybe there can be an outlier like 20-21 but that’s a maybe one in ten proposition. Or we get a season with no/little SE Ridge like last winter and lots of suppression. Of course the I-90 corridor and north can still get a lot from SWFEs which 07-08 had pretty much every other day.

[40/70 Benchmark]

31 minutes ago, jm1220 said:

Until that W PAC meaningfully changes it’s very difficult to be hopeful south of I-90 for a decent winter. Maybe there can be an outlier like 20-21 but that’s a maybe one in ten proposition. Or we get a season with no/little SE Ridge like last winter and lots of suppression. Of course the I-90 corridor and north can still get a lot from SWFEs which 07-08 had pretty much every other day.

Problem is that since SE Canada hasn't been cold, you have had to get up to about Manchester, NH to benefit much from those...this is why I haven't sniffed normal seasonal snowfall since 2017-2018. Last year SE Canada was colder, but it was so dry that it didn't matter. I think we can at least get the SWFE gradient back closer to I 90 again this year.

[40/70 Benchmark]

Anyone know why this IOD link isn't updating, and where the updated numbers are?

https://psl.noaa.gov/gcos_wgsp/Timeseries/Data/dmi.had.long.data

[DarkSharkWX]

2 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Anyone know why this IOD link isn't updating, and where the updated numbers are?

https://psl.noaa.gov/gcos_wgsp/Timeseries/Data/dmi.had.long.data

i'm pretty sure this is the one that evb uses, https://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/indices.shtml?bookmark=iod

[Birds~69]

Already 74F, looks to be the last 80F+ for a while... maybe even till next year.

[snowman19]

Until that W PAC meaningfully changes it’s very difficult to be hopeful south of I-90 for a decent winter. Maybe there can be an outlier like 20-21 but that’s a maybe one in ten proposition. Or we get a season with no/little SE Ridge like last winter and lots of suppression. Of course the I-90 corridor and north can still get a lot from SWFEs which 07-08 had pretty much every other day.

Honestly, the most concerning thing, at least as far as snowfall is the drought. These typically aren’t easy to break, especially when in place for several months. They form a feedback cycle. And parts of the northeast are historically dry

As far as the SE ridge, I think we do see much more SE ridging this time around due to the state of the Atlantic. BAMWX actually touched on this yesterday

[40/70 Benchmark]

7 minutes ago, snowman19 said:

Honestly, the most concerning thing, at least as far as snowfall is the drought. These typically aren’t easy to break, especially when in place for several months. They form a feedback cycle. And parts of the northeast are historically dry

 

 

 

As far as the SE ridge, I think we do see much more SE ridging this time around due to the state of the Atlantic. BAMWX actually touched on this yesterday

 

 

 

 

 

 

The real heart to the drought is over northern New England....couple that with a modest +NAO and maybe its finally my turn.

[40/70 Benchmark]

 

[40/70 Benchmark]

Looks similar, but I'm a bit more aggressive of some episode(s) of blocking do to the easterly QBO/solar max composite.

[40/70 Benchmark]

Given the embryonic nature of this cool ENSO, I'm not sure the -IOD is really going to couple with it enough to be a huge deal....bottom line is I would expect a weak La Nina response...this shouldn't be 2022-2023.