2025-2026 ENSO

[Typhoon Tip]

Whaaaa

cluttering up a thread that’s 244 pages long? how the hell can you tell 

LOL

[raindancewx]

Subsurface decay is way ahead of last year. Doesn't mean we go to El Nino. But the warmth below the western tropical Pacific is advancing east and toward the surface pretty steadily.

[raindancewx]

By the way - this is the -ENSO (La Nina/near La Nina), -PNA, -WPO, -NAO composite for December since 1950. Its very similar to the pattern this month, but less extreme. The pattern this month has the cold/warm areas in the same place, just need to add at least 4-6F to both the cold (colder) and the warmth (warmer).

In the composite, January is still pretty cold. But you do see the cold retrogress hard to the West - in March. February is not coherent - its all over the place. -NAO if it continues becomes a pretty strong cold signal further west later in the winter, particularly Jan 15 and on.

[raindancewx]

Look familiar? This is Dec 1962, 1964, 1975, 2010 warmed up two degrees. Core heat Northwest, not Southwest. Core cold Lakes/Mid Atlatnic, not Northern Plains or New England. I just picked the best temp matches in the -PNA, -WPO, -NAO, -ENSO set.

These are all warmed up by 2F - still supports my idea since Sep/Oct of cold eventually retrogressing to the West.

[Daniel Boone]

2 hours ago, raindancewx said:

This is a look at what the month looks like to date. Had the right idea blending 2013/2024 -

Jan 2025/2014 doesn't look too different from month to date, but there are hints of changes by Alaska. I don't think the overall look of the pattern will collapse for a bit. But positioning of the key feature will migrate slowly in January.

Good work man !

[snowfan789]

1 hour ago, raindancewx said:

Look familiar? This is Dec 1962, 1964, 1975, 2010 warmed up two degrees. Core heat Northwest, not Southwest. Core cold Lakes/Mid Atlatnic, not Northern Plains or New England. I just picked the best temp matches in the -PNA, -WPO, -NAO, -ENSO set.

These are all warmed up by 2F - still supports my idea since Sep/Oct of cold eventually retrogressing to the West.

How do things look rolling forward in terms of precip? Absolutely brutal start to the snow season in much of the West.

[Terpeast]

Today's euro weeklies now popping a +PNA with colder trends for the east for the entire forecast period. We'll see if this holds...

[bluewave]

15 hours ago, GaWx said:

I don’t know why the NAO and its influence has been underdone on the models, but these kinds of things make forecasting discussions so interesting. Just think if the models were all knowing. The discussion would be pretty boring.

Probably related to the complexity of modeling long range interactions between the stratosphere and troposphere.

My guess is that this was linked to the record low sea ice Kara and Barents seas.

Very intersting paper below matches the current patterns around the Northern Hemisphere. 

 

 

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/abc215

LETTER • THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE IS OPEN ACCESS

North American cold events following sudden stratospheric warming in the presence of low Barents-Kara Sea sea ice

 

 

Abstract

While the relationship between the Arctic sea ice loss and midlatitude winter climate has been well discussed, especially on the seasonal mean scale, it remains unclear whether the Arctic sea ice condition affects the predictability of North American cold weather on the subseasonal time scale. Here we find that, in the presence of low Barents-Kara Sea (BKS) sea ice, sudden stratospheric warmings (SSWs) can favor surface cold spells over North America at the subseasonal timescale based on observations and model experiments. A persistent ridge of wave-2 pattern emerges over the Bering Sea-Gulf of Alaska several weeks after the SSW onset, with a coherent structure from the stratosphere to the surface, which, in turn, is conducive to synoptic cold air outbreaks in Canada and midwestern USA. This highlights a planetary wave pathway relating to BKS sea ice changes, by which the stratospheric polar vortex impacts the regional surface temperature on the subseasonal scale. In contrast, this mechanism does not occur with positive BKS sea ice anomaly. These findings help to improve the subseasonal predictability over North America, especially under the background of rapid change of Arctic sea ice in a warming world.

 

[GaWx]

Natural gas is up 4% today, which I assume is due to the model consensus again correcting colder continually due to not seeing E US cold well that’s over one week out.

[Terpeast]

8 minutes ago, GaWx said:

Natural gas is up 4% today, which I assume is due to the model consensus again correcting colder continually due to not seeing E US cold well that’s over one week out.

Markets moving on today's euro weeklies. Still would like to see them being more consistent to go all-in on the cold east for Jan.

[bluewave]

3 minutes ago, Terpeast said:

Markets moving on today's euro weeklies. Still would like to see them being more consistent to go all-in on the cold east for Jan.

This is the first time in a while that the 11-15 day ensembles have had this much of a warm bias in the East. 
 

https://frontierweather.dtn.com/verification.html

 

[Krs4Lfe]

There are some signs that the cold air bottled up in Alaska and Canada might surge southward in 2 weeks time, which is the first week of January. That would likely be the return of winter for most of the country. Astonishing how warm it's been since mid month for most of CONUS. Spring-Summer like Christmas for most. January 2024 and January 2022 had an epic return to winter after a very warm december. Usually storminess accompanies the arctic cold plunges. Let's hope that's the case this time 

[BlizzardWx]

Definitely some large and important trends. On the first trough I think its the more SW -NAO high that helps the trough dig into the Plains more effectively. The forecast is trending colder quickly here for next next week. Moving towards +PNA near days 8-10 as well. If that west coast ridge can merge with the WPO high I bet a lot of cold air dumps south in a hurry. Obviously trends can reverse, but it looks more promising than I've seen in a while. 

[GaWx]

34 minutes ago, BlizzardWx said:

Definitely some large and important trends. On the first trough I think its the more SW -NAO high that helps the trough dig into the Plains more effectively. The forecast is trending colder quickly here for next next week. Moving towards +PNA near days 8-10 as well. If that west coast ridge can merge with the WPO high I bet a lot of cold air dumps south in a hurry. Obviously trends can reverse, but it looks more promising than I've seen in a while. 

It’s still very early but: Could this end up still another +PNA Jan following a -PNA Dec during -ENSO, which has pretty much been the case since 1983-4? Bet the streak? 2021-2 analog FTW perhaps?

@40/70 Benchmark

This last post by @bluewaveabout strong warm E US biases in the E US in the 11-15 the last 90 days is very significant!

[GaWx]

Good news. Eric Webb, who recently had been pessimistic about January due largely to the Pacific warm pool not moving eastward enough, sounds like he’s likely about to come around to being bullish instead: 

I just asked Eric this on another public BB:

Eric,
“Are you having second thoughts about your recent pessimistic warmth for January? I’m sensing a tone change in your most recent posts.”

 His answer is very nice to see:

I'd definitely say so, especially early on. Taking a gigantic L on the big warm-up late December, thanks to this huge -NAO trend in the medium range. Some of those takes I've had are aging as badly as the egg nog you accidentally left in the back of your fridge from last Christmas.

@snowman19since you’ve been posting his pessimistic posts

 

[PhiEaglesfan712]

March 29, 2025 (5 days out): 

December 26, 2025 (4.75 days out): 

[40/70 Benchmark]

11 minutes ago, GaWx said:

Good news. Eric Webb, who recently had been pessimistic about January due largely to the Pacific warm pool not moving eastward enough, sounds like he’s likely about to come around to being bullish instead: 

I just asked Eric this on another public BB:

Eric,
“Are you having second thoughts about your recent pessimistic warmth for January? I’m sensing a tone change in your most recent posts.”

 His answer is very nice to see:

I'd definitely say so, especially early on. Taking a gigantic L on the big warm-up late December, thanks to this huge -NAO trend in the medium range. Some of those takes I've had are aging as badly as the egg nog you accidentally left in the back of your fridge from last Christmas.

@snowman19since you’ve been posting his pessimistic posts

 

Welcome to November, Mr. Webb...happy to have had you join us.

+PNA January...book it.

The L that I will take is on the latter December/early January NAO block....missed that.

[SnowGoose69]

7 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Welcome to November, Mr. Webb...happy to have had you join us.

+PNA January...book it.

The L that I will take is on the latter December/early January NAO block....missed that.

May depend on how negative it is early.  I’m still not confident we see it go positive consistently til like 1/12-1/15 outside of what might be a brief transient positive phase coming up in a week or just under that.  If it averages only like -1 to -1.5 the first 12 days of the month it could probably end up positive in the end on the means 

[MJO812]

[MJO812]

1 hour ago, BlizzardWx said:

Definitely some large and important trends. On the first trough I think its the more SW -NAO high that helps the trough dig into the Plains more effectively. The forecast is trending colder quickly here for next next week. Moving towards +PNA near days 8-10 as well. If that west coast ridge can merge with the WPO high I bet a lot of cold air dumps south in a hurry. Obviously trends can reverse, but it looks more promising than I've seen in a while. 

AI GFS develops a favorable pattern during the 1st week of January. Positive PNA.

[Terpeast]

At least Webb admitted to the L. I’ll give him that. 

[40/70 Benchmark]

22 minutes ago, SnowGoose69 said:

May depend on how negative it is early.  I’m still not confident we see it go positive consistently til like 1/12-1/15 outside of what might be a brief transient positive phase coming up in a week or just under that.  If it averages only like -1 to -1.5 the first 12 days of the month it could probably end up positive in the end on the means 

Right...I am referring to the monthly mean...not implying wall-to-wall +2SD PNA for all of January...

[40/70 Benchmark]

16 minutes ago, Terpeast said:

At least Webb admitted to the L. I’ll give him that. 

All we can ask...

[SnowGoose69]

15 minutes ago, Terpeast said:

At least Webb admitted to the L. I’ll give him that. 

There were a couple of ways I felt we’d head in early January.  One was we’d gradually transition to something more +PNA and favorable for 2-3 weeks.  The other was we’d lose the WPO/AO/NAO and it would go ugly for at least awhile if not most of the rest of the way.  Some years in similar groupings of analogs did see that happen.  Right now it looks like we’ll avoid that.  The weeklies showing the same pattern for like 6 weeks into late January as recent as 5-7 days ago as we discussed somewhat was always unlikely as it feels as if the last 15 or so years we never hold any pattern in the winter for more than like 3 weeks anymore 

[PhiEaglesfan712]

It looks like we go warm by the 2nd week of January, which makes sense, considering we haven't had a December and January go all the way cold since 2010-11: