2025-2026 ENSO

[GaWx]

3 hours ago, cmillzz said:

Guidance has also backed off on the blocking a bit.

 

1 hour ago, MJO812 said:

Slightly

Yesterday’s NAO fcast had clear majority of members going <0:

Today’s NAO fcast: only ~50% go <0

 

AO comparisons are similar.

What will the next few days show?  This is pretty volatile.

[GaWx]

MJO forecasted to be in phase 8 most of rest of March. On average during Marches that were post La Niña winter, phase 8 was the 2nd coldest to phase 7 in Baltimore meaning being warm in the Mid-Atlantic/NE for the period averaged out will not be favored (note that I’m not saying anything explicitly about snow here as it’s getting late for that, especially MidAtlantic):

GEFS:

EPS:

 

@EastonSN+

[michsnowfreak]

9 hours ago, bkviking said:

4 of those winters were colder than normal in the northeast (88-89 the exception I believe) . Western ridge patterns? 

Yup. 4 of the 5 were cold winters here. The huge exception being 1889-90 which was also warm and equally snowless. 

This year was way more extreme than normal, but let's not forget a general rule of thumb that relative to climo, a good winter east is usually meh west and vice versa.

[Torchageddon]

9 hours ago, roardog said:

Not to downplay how bad things are out there right now because they are bad but it’s going to end up being a huge anomaly in the end. Didn’t you guys just have a string of good winters the last decade? I know 22-23 was cold in the west for sure. It’s not like some switch was flipped and now this is the “new normal”. When March 2012 happened over here after a warm and snowless winter, I read a couple of articles about how this was going to happen more because of climate change. Well, no surprise to me, nothing even close to that has happened since. Or how about the “permanent” Texas drought I kept reading about in the early 2010s? Next thing you knew it was flooding there.lol. 
 

Do you recall what articles they were? I have an interest in studying the March 2012 event like where the return rates touted came from, sigmas, air charts, etc. Maybe the jist of their thought was more extremes in the future that are outside the bell curve not literally similar March heatwaves like that; any pub that predicts such would be a rag IMO. Even with a rapidly warming climate I have a hard time believing March 2012 will be repeated much, if any in our lifetimes. Different date/place like the Pacific NW event in June 2021 sure.

[cmillzz]

9 hours ago, roardog said:

Not to downplay how bad things are out there right now because they are bad but it’s going to end up being a huge anomaly in the end. Didn’t you guys just have a string of good winters the last decade? I know 22-23 was cold in the west for sure. It’s not like some switch was flipped and now this is the “new normal”. When March 2012 happened over here after a warm and snowless winter, I read a couple of articles about how this was going to happen more because of climate change. Well, no surprise to me, nothing even close to that has happened since. Or how about the “permanent” Texas drought I kept reading about in the early 2010s? Next thing you knew it was flooding there.lol. 
 

Idk, we've had plenty of very warm months since then. Feb 2024 featured similar anomalies to March 2012 actually in parts of the Midwest. Fargo had a +17.5 departure and broke its previous warm Feb record by like 3 degrees, which is 2012-esque.

[roardog]

1 hour ago, Torchageddon said:

Do you recall what articles they were? I have an interest in studying the March 2012 event like where the return rates touted came from, sigmas, air charts, etc. Maybe the jist of their thought was more extremes in the future that are outside the bell curve not literally similar March heatwaves like that; any pub that predicts such would be a rag IMO. Even with a rapidly warming climate I have a hard time believing March 2012 will be repeated much, if any in our lifetimes. Different date/place like the Pacific NW event in June 2021 sure.

The only thing I can remember is reading them from the yahoo home page back then. Who wrote them or anything like that I can’t remember. I would try searching for something like “March 2012 Great Lakes climate change” and see what you can find. 

[LakePaste25]

13 hours ago, Torchageddon said:

Do you recall what articles they were? I have an interest in studying the March 2012 event like where the return rates touted came from, sigmas, air charts, etc. Maybe the jist of their thought was more extremes in the future that are outside the bell curve not literally similar March heatwaves like that; any pub that predicts such would be a rag IMO. Even with a rapidly warming climate I have a hard time believing March 2012 will be repeated much, if any in our lifetimes. Different date/place like the Pacific NW event in June 2021 sure.

Correct, March 2012 probably becomes a once per generation event at most under 2C. Would need way more warming for that to even get a return interval of once per decade.

Unfortunately for winter weenies, December 2015 style winter warm events do become far more frequent under 2C. Once per decade at least. 

[cmillzz]

1 hour ago, LakePaste25 said:

Correct, March 2012 probably becomes a once per generation event at most under 2C. Would need way more warming for that to even get a return interval of once per decade.

Unfortunately for winter weenies, December 2015 style winter warm events do become far more frequent under 2C. Once per decade at least. 

There was a now deleted blog post which talked about the standard deviation and return rate of the event itself being up to 4000 years at the time, which honestly isn’t too far-fetched when you look at some of the records broken.

Chicago for example recorded eight days of 80°+ during the event, which has only been done once in APRIL let alone March, and before the heat wave Chicago had only seen like ten 80°+ March days in recorded history.

I will say that March has trended quite warm since then, especially in the 2020s where virtually ever March has been warmer than average, and this year is no different.

[cmillzz]

There’s been all this talk about the warmth out west (and rightfully so), but funnily the eastern half of the country has actually been warmer relative to average than the west this month, though that’s going to change soon obviously.

[GaWx]

On 3/15/2026 at 11:26 AM, GaWx said:

 

Yesterday’s NAO fcast had clear majority of members going <0:

Today’s NAO fcast: only ~50% go <0

 

AO comparisons are similar.

What will the next few days show?  This is pretty volatile.

Followup: even higher NAO in today’s forecast except the very end…so continuation of yesterday’s +NAO trend:

 

Yesterday:

Today:

 

Edit: MJO still forecasted to be in 8 most of rest of March fwiw.

[MJO812]

8 minutes ago, GaWx said:

Followup: even higher NAO in today’s forecast except the very end…so continuation of yesterday’s +NAO trend:

 

Yesterday:

Today:

Not good if you want to see winter weather in the east. Bad trend in the wrong direction.  There was hope for a wintry period but now its fading.

Looks like I will end up with 47 inches this winter bearing a miracle event.

[GaWx]

20 minutes ago, MJO812 said:

Not good if you want to see winter weather in the east. Bad trend in the wrong direction.  There was hope for a wintry period but now its fading.

Looks like I will end up with 47 inches this winter bearing a miracle event.

Yeah, bad NAO trends overall. But there’s still a short cold period showing up for ~3/28. So, though not likely, some NE big cities’ snow still can’t be ruled out for then.

[MJO812]

7 minutes ago, GaWx said:

Yeah, bad NAO trends overall. But there’s still a short cold period showing up for ~3/28. So, though not likely, some NE big cities’ snow still can’t be ruled out for then.

Meh thats too late. The 20th to 30th had promise and still can produce but we need to see encouraging NAO trends. I thought the NAO would be more negative with the MJO going into 8 and 1.