2025-2026 ENSO

[LakePaste25]

3 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

I haven't looked, but any difference in strength is trivial...if anything, this year ENSO should be more favorable because last year was a Modoki, as opposed to east-central this year. The hallmark of the west warn pool has been a consistent strongly +WPO due to the cold being bottled up near Siberia....thia year we have seen a reprieve from that for the first time since 2021-2022.

Yeah and he even states this earlier. I’m not necessarily trying to call him out for being wrong but i’d like to know what has changed and is giving us a more canonical Nina. 

 

[GaWx]

57 minutes ago, LakePaste25 said:

Yeah and he even states this earlier. I’m not necessarily trying to call him out for being wrong but i’d like to know what has changed and is giving us a more canonical Nina. 

 

 
Today, I asked Eric to address his earlier thoughts about Feb having good prospects to go against the grain of warm Niña Febs should La Niña fade early. He implied that, regardless,

we’re not doing enough.

I then asked him, “What do you mean that we’re not doing enough? How’s ENSO looking to you for Feb?”

 His answer:

I would like to see a big and slow MJO event to go across the entire Warm Pool in January and I am not seeing that. 

These Convectively Kelvin Waves are moving us towards El Nino of course, but the westerly wind bursts from them aren’t as strong or sustained as I’d like them to be to zonally advect the warm pool eastward more quickly. 

Our only ticket out of this crap mid to late winter is to push the warm pool east enough to extend the pacific jet to a point where we get a +PNA/+TNH/+NAO pattern instead of a -PNA/+TNH/+NAO. That seems less likely to me than say a month or so ago given how the Warm Pool has behaved to this point

@40/70 Benchmark

[LakePaste25]

32 minutes ago, GaWx said:

 
Today, I asked Eric to address his earlier thoughts about Feb having good prospects to go against the grain of warm Niña Febs should La Niña fade early. He implied that, regardless,

we’re not doing enough.

I then asked him, “What do you mean that we’re not doing enough? How’s ENSO looking to you for Feb?”

 His answer:

I would like to see a big and slow MJO event to go across the entire Warm Pool in January and I am not seeing that. 

These Convectively Kelvin Waves are moving us towards El Nino of course, but the westerly wind bursts from them aren’t as strong or sustained as I’d like them to be to zonally advect the warm pool eastward more quickly. 

Our only ticket out of this crap mid to late winter is to push the warm pool east enough to extend the pacific jet to a point where we get a +PNA/+TNH/+NAO pattern instead of a -PNA/+TNH/+NAO. That seems less likely to me than say a month or so ago given how the Warm Pool has behaved to this point

@40/70 Benchmark

Yeah i guess my question is why we need the warm pool to extend east this year and not last year. For feb it makes sense. What is different about this January vs. last January when we had a +PNA?

[40/70 Benchmark]

1 hour ago, GaWx said:

 
Today, I asked Eric to address his earlier thoughts about Feb having good prospects to go against the grain of warm Niña Febs should La Niña fade early. He implied that, regardless,

we’re not doing enough.

I then asked him, “What do you mean that we’re not doing enough? How’s ENSO looking to you for Feb?”

 His answer:

I would like to see a big and slow MJO event to go across the entire Warm Pool in January and I am not seeing that. 

These Convectively Kelvin Waves are moving us towards El Nino of course, but the westerly wind bursts from them aren’t as strong or sustained as I’d like them to be to zonally advect the warm pool eastward more quickly. 

Our only ticket out of this crap mid to late winter is to push the warm pool east enough to extend the pacific jet to a point where we get a +PNA/+TNH/+NAO pattern instead of a -PNA/+TNH/+NAO. That seems less likely to me than say a month or so ago given how the Warm Pool has behaved to this point

@40/70 Benchmark

Still doesn't adress why we need thr warm pook to move east to get +TNH.

[40/70 Benchmark]

30 minutes ago, LakePaste25 said:

Yeah i guess my question is why we need the warm pool to extend east this year and not last year. For feb it makes sense. What is different about this January vs. last January when we had a +PNA?

January is going to be +PNA and the season will average -WPO....very strong statistical evidence. 

[SnowGoose69]

32 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

January is going to be +PNA and the season will average -WPO....very strong statistical evidence. 

The 18Z GEFS for the first time from like 360-384 shows signs of a +PNA trying to develop but I'd bet its close to the 12th-15th before any chance of it

[GaWx]

11 hours ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

January is going to be +PNA and the season will average -WPO....very strong statistical evidence. 

The models are pretty unanimous on continuing the -WPO into Jan and the strongly -WPOs in Dec strongly support a -WPO as we know. We also know that the -ENSO -PNA stats since 1983-4 suggest good support for a +PNA Jan. But both the Euro Weeklies and extended GEFS continue to show a -PNA throughout Jan (see images below). Are you saying these models are totally wrong and will correct toward +PNA? If so, why do you think they’re going -PNA? Persistence? (even though I’ve seen the EW predict PNA changes and do well).

 

[GaWx]

 MJO is in day 3 (12/17-19) of the 3rd phase 8 of this month:

[qg_omega]

53 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

January is going to be +PNA and the season will average -WPO....very strong statistical evidence. 

There is no evidence for a +PNA in January

[40/70 Benchmark]

3 minutes ago, qg_omega said:

There is no evidence for a +PNA in January

Yes, there is.

[40/70 Benchmark]

19 minutes ago, GaWx said:

The models are pretty unanimous on continuing the -WPO into Jan and the strongly -WPOs in Dec strongly support a -WPO as we know. We also know that the -ENSO -PNA stats since 1983-4 suggest good support for a +PNA Jan. But both the Euro Weeklies and extended GEFS continue to show a -PNA throughout Jan (see images below). Are you saying these models are totally wrong and will correct toward +PNA? If so, why do you think they’re going -PNA? Persistence? (even though I’ve seen the EW predict PNA changes and do well).

That guidance shows it essentially neutralizing by January 5th...pop a +TNH mid-month....done.

[40/70 Benchmark]

30 minutes ago, SnowGoose69 said:

The 18Z GEFS for the first time from like 360-384 shows signs of a +PNA trying to develop but I'd bet its close to the 12th-15th before any chance of it

Sure...reasonable. 

3 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

That guidance shows it essentially neutralizing by January 5th...pop a +TNH mid-month....done.

 

[LakePaste25]

1 hour ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

January is going to be +PNA and the season will average -WPO....very strong statistical evidence. 

Agreed and makes sense. February here i’m expecting canonical Nina, which is usually a mixed bag of 60+ degree torches, rain/ice/sleet/snow overrunning events as the SE ridge waxes and wanes. January colder and mostly snow. 

[40/70 Benchmark]

2 minutes ago, LakePaste25 said:

Agreed and makes sense. February here i’m expecting canonical Nina, which is usually a mixed bag of 60+ degree torches, rain/ice/sleet/snow overrunning events as the SE ridge waxes and wanes. January colder and mostly snow. 

I think the +TNH will run a bit into Feb before we get very mild and await the stratosphere.

[GaWx]

 I continue to have a concern about certain WxBell maps being off. I’ve discussed the CFS being wacky and mainly too cold a number of times with@donsutherland1. But I also can’t figure out why their Euro Weekly (EW) maps are always colder than the ECMWF’s own EW maps! To me it just tells me that the WB EW maps are significantly too cold, period, which remains a concern. Why are they too cold? It’s definitely not due to climo base differences because if anything the in-house uses warmer climo (last 20 years), not colder, vs WB’s 1991-2020. Warmer climo means colder in-house anomaly maps, the opposite of reality! So, that makes the discrepancy even worse!

 Here’s examples from today’s EWs:

1. For Jan 12-18th:

ECMWF: AN ~80%, BN ~2% of US

 

WxBell: why do they have…

- AN in only ~1/3 of US vs 80% on in-house?

- BN ~25% of US vs only 2% on in-house?

————-
2. For Jan 19th-25th:

ECMWF: AN ~50%, BN ~ 3% of US

 

WxBell: why do they have…

- AN in only ~15% of US vs 50% on in-house?

- BN ~50% of US vs only 3% on in-house?

[donsutherland1]

5 minutes ago, GaWx said:

 I continue to have a concern about certain WxBell maps being off. I’ve discussed the CFS being wacky and mainly too cold a number of times to @donsutherland1. But I also can’t figure out why their Euro Weekly (EW) maps are always colder than the ECMWF’s own EW maps! To me it just tells me that the WB EW maps are significantly too cold, period, which remains a concern. Why are they too cold?

 Here’s examples from today’s EWs:

1. For Jan 12-18th:

ECMWF: AN ~80%, BN ~2% of US

 

WxBell: why do they have…

- AN in only ~1/3 of US vs 80% on in-house?

- BN ~25% of US vs only 2% on in-house?

————-
2. For Jan 19th-25th:

ECMWF: AN ~50%, BN ~ 3% of US

 

WxBell: why do they have…

- AN in only ~10% of US vs 50% on in-house?

- BN ~50% of US vs only 3% on in-house?

Those are large differences. I'm not sure whether the algorithm is faulty or their methodology is off.

[GaWx]

 New video this evening from BAMWx (see link below) (I haven’t watched it yet)(don’t know why it shows twice but couldn’t fix it)

Summary from @bncho

Here were my main takeaways from this video:

1. Dec 29-31 will trend colder, like it has been for the past few days.
2. He thinks there'll be a big storm favoring NE for the first week of January; his top analogs like 1996 and 2000
3. Somewhere between the end of Dec and the start of Jan, he thinks that WWBs will happen, causing:
- the death of La Nina 
- -EPO by early Jan, but no +PNA
- MJO to move very quickly and finally get unstuck thru phases 2, 3, 4, etc., finally getting back into 7 by around Jan 15 (just in time for prime climo)
4. He likes the fact that the PV is on our side of the hemisphere, and he thinks it'll stay there
5. The models are not seeing the cold in the long-range

TL;DR: BAM WX believes that there will be a prolonged period of cold and stormy weather from Jan 15 to Feb 1. The first two weeks of January will likely offer shots of cold, but with relaxations in between.

 

[bncho]

10 minutes ago, GaWx said:

 New video this evening from BAMWx (see link below) (I haven’t watched it yet)(don’t know why it shows twice but couldn’t fix it)

Summary from @bncho

Here were my main takeaways from this video:

1. Dec 29-31 will trend colder, like it has been for the past few days.
2. He thinks there'll be a big storm favoring NE for the first week of January; his top analogs like 1996 and 2000
3. Somewhere between the end of Dec and the start of Jan, he thinks that WWBs will happen, causing:
- the death of La Nina 
- -EPO by early Jan, but no +PNA
- MJO to move very quickly and finally get unstuck thru phases 2, 3, 4, etc., finally getting back into 7 by around Jan 15 (just in time for prime climo)
4. He likes the fact that the PV is on our side of the hemisphere, and he thinks it'll stay there
5. The models are not seeing the cold in the long-range

TL;DR: BAM WX believes that there will be a prolonged period of cold and stormy weather from Jan 15 to Feb 1. The first two weeks of January will likely offer shots of cold, but with relaxations in between.

 

He also mentioned a lot about convections, but I don't know anything about that, so hopefully somebody more knowledgable can explain

[40/70 Benchmark]

13 minutes ago, bncho said:

He also mentioned a lot about convections, but I don't know anything about that, so hopefully somebody more knowledgable can explain

Agree on the Jan 15-Feb 1 timeframe.

[40/70 Benchmark]

Great video by BAM....only point I am at odds with him is the PNA for January, but that is probably a bigger deal for the mid Atlantic than my area.

[MJO812]

Eps is now correcting with the blocking. Its hard to take these models seriously in the long range.

Courtesy of another forum

[EasternLI]

Yeah nice video from him. Brought up some of what I posted about on Saturday. I'm a little quicker with the process though. Don't need convection at the dateline for things to happen. It's well underway before that. Still think a +PNA is a very real possibility though too. But same general idea. Pacific jet fires off and these waves break. I think the 00z EPS is still suggesting that the whole process gets underway too TBH. 

[40/70 Benchmark]

6 minutes ago, EasternLI said:

Yeah nice video from him. Brought up some of what I posted about on Saturday. I'm a little quicker with the process though. Don't need convection at the dateline for things to happen. It's well underway before that. Still think a +PNA is a very real possibility though too. But same general idea. Pacific jet fires off and these waves break. I think the 00z EPS is still suggesting that the whole process gets underway too TBH. 

I haven't put much effort into whether or not we trend colder in the shorter term (don't really care), but expect this Pacific trough regime to last into mid January before the flip, which is consistent with his timeframe. It's important to keep in mind that the Pacific trough regime doesn't have to mean an all out torch, which some may be conditioned to believe. BAM is right about the PV being on our side of the hemisphere, so that would help to mitigate that.

[GaWx]

37 minutes ago, MJO812 said:

Eps is now correcting with the blocking. Its hard to take these models seriously in the long range.

Courtesy of another forum

Look at how much the PNA has risen for a week from now:

From ~-2 as of 2 weeks out

GEFS:

EPS:

To ~0 one week out:

GEFS:

EPS:

 

[EasternLI]

Yeah, just wouldn't be surprised to see changes happen a couple or few days before the 15th is all I'm saying. Nothing crazy. That is a good point about the vortex too. Absolutely. 

[GaWx]

1 hour ago, MJO812 said:

Eps is now correcting with the blocking. Its hard to take these models seriously in the long range.

Courtesy of another forum

This is a great GIF! Note that this major evolution of the EPS over this one week period of runs has occurred with the Aleutian ridge not budging but at the same time the -NAO gets stronger and forces the rise of the PNA/big colder E US change from the NE!

EPS NAO for late month as of one week ago: ~-1

 

EPS NAO for late month as of today: ~-2.5