2025-2026 ENSO

[snowman19]

1 hour ago, roardog said:

If you're looking at it from where you live, I guess it's not great but overall it quickly brings back the -WPO so they'll be a lot of arctic air pressing into the ridge so I would say it actually looks pretty wintry for the country especially as you go north and west. I know that's not good for your area though.

If I’m not mistaken @donsutherland1 mentioned just yesterday that once we get to mid-February and beyond, the WPO becomes less important

[e pluribus unum]

7 hours ago, TheClimateChanger said:

You can really see how that California tule fog or whatever they were calling it screwed us out of an even warmer December & January.

Subsidence inversions are a very natural part of the winter climo in the West and it's tough to juggle record warmth in the higher elevations with record warmth in the valleys in December and January. Massive ridges in the West in the mid-winter often lead to colder than average conditions in the valleys. 

The PNW actually had the perfect storm of warmth in December with the jet stream lashing us the entire month and enough warm air advection in the higher elevations to screw them up as well. Down in CA they were far enough removed from the jet for the inversion to hold at the lower elevations. 

 

[PhiEaglesfan712]

2 hours ago, bluewave said:

I think you are incorrectly referring to one of my older discussions. My statement was that in order to get back to colder winters prior to the big  temperature rise in 2015-2016 we would need a major volcanic eruption to cool the climate down for 3-7 years before the cooling aerosol effects wear off.

What this means is that it’s going to be a challenge to get a repeat of 2014-2015 in Boston, 2013-2014 in the Great Lakes, 2009-2010 in the Mid-Atlantic, 1995-1996 in the Mid-Atlantic to Northeast, the top 10 coldest winters which we experienced Nationally during the 1970s , and for North America on the whole in 1993-1994 winter.

It doesn’t mean that we can’t still get colder winters especially on a regional to multi regional basis. Just that they will struggle to match the colder rankings we experienced back in the old days. This winter and last winter are prime examples of this. 

1993-94 (and possibly even 1995-96) was the result of the after effects of Pinatubo, our last major volcanic eruption. The cooling effects definitely wore off by the 1997-98 el nino, which was the next big global temperature jump.

[donsutherland1]

1 hour ago, snowman19 said:

If I’m not mistaken @donsutherland1 mentioned just yesterday that once we get to mid-February and beyond, the WPO becomes less important

Yes. That's due to shortening wave lengths. EPO becomes relatively more important.