2025-2026 ENSO

[michsnowfreak]

1 hour ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

I would go:

2017-2018

2020-2021

2016-2017

2023-2024

2019-2020

2018-2019

2022-2023

2021-2022

2024-2025

 

Interesting topic. Id very roughly go, based on all factors:

2017-18
2020-21
2021-22
2018-19
2019-20
2024-25
2016-17
2022-23
2023-24

The order of the middle 3 is very debatable.
 

[LibertyBell]

1 hour ago, TheClimateChanger said:

One thing that's interesting about 1881, September was blazing hot in the east, but there was a bunch of snow in the west. Flurries in St. Vincent and Moorhead, Minnesota on the 4th - yes, just 4 days out of August! A swath of 4-6 inches of snow from Iowa to Minnesota on the 16th. Cheyenne, Wyoming even performed the remarkable feat of a 15-minute snow shower from a cloudless sky on the 29th.

It was even so cold in Texas and Oklahoma (then known as Indian Territory) that a ton of cattle died. This is unthinkable in September.

More on that outrageous snow storm from September 16, 1881:

Snow in September? It’s happened before | Schnack's Weather Blog | kwwl.com

Sept16Snow.pdf

 

wait how do you get 15 minutes of snow from a cloudless sky?

and I thought the 8 inch diameter snowflake that fell in Montana was ridiculous!  I wonder if they froze that thing to save it for posterity lol.

 

We once had snow from a cloudless sky, I don't remember what year (late 80s or early 90s) and it was in December.  But it happened at night and it was a full moon and it snowed for 2 hours and we got 1-2 inches (it snowed really hard from a cloudless sky.) An arctic front had come through that day and we had on and off snow showers with mostly sunny skies all day and it was very windy.

I can't really say the sky was completely cloudless but since I could clearly see the full moon while it was snowing hard, thats what I assume

Can you find out what year that happened?

it happened from 10 PM to Midnight I remember this because I saw the radar for it on the 10 oclock news on PIX11 and it was small stalled snow shower near JFK and the south shore of Nassau county.

 

[TheClimateChanger]

5 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

wait how do you get 15 minutes of snow from a cloudless sky?

and I thought the 8 inch diameter snowflake that fell in Montana was ridiculous!  I wonder if they froze that thing to save it for posterity lol.

 

We once had snow from a cloudless sky, I don't remember what year (late 80s or early 90s) and it was in December.  But it happened at night and it was a full moon and it snowed for 2 hours and we got 1-2 inches (it snowed really hard from a cloudless sky.) An arctic front had come through that day and we had on and off snow showers with mostly sunny skies all day and it was very windy.

I can't really say the sky was completely cloudless but since I could clearly see the full moon while it was snowing hard, thats what I assume

Can you find out what year that happened?

it happened from 10 PM to Midnight I remember this because I saw the radar for it on the 10 oclock news on PIX11 and it was small stalled snow shower near JFK and the south shore of Nassau county.

 

I'm guessing the clouds from which it was falling were blocked by terrain from the observer's view point? The clouds may have dissipated or moved out of view while the snow was still drifting to the ground, I suppose.

[michsnowfreak]

1 hour ago, TheClimateChanger said:

Coming on the heels of the infamous "Hard Winter" of 1880-1881, snow in September... folks must have really been battening down the hatches for a brutal winter. Only to have the rugged completely pulled out from under them.

The Long Winter of 1880/81 in: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society Volume 101 Issue 6 (2020)

Hard Winter of 1880–81 - Wikipedia

I have brought up the infamous 1880-81 & 1881-82 winters many times.

They were actually during a period locally which lasted from 1874-75 thru 1881-82 where every other winter alternated from abnormally cold between abnormally warm. Incredibly all 8 of those winters (4 warm, 4 cold) are still in Detroits all-time top 20 coldest/warmest winters list.

The winter of 1880-81 saw 93.6" of snow and an avg temp of 21.6F followed by 1881-82 with 13.2" of snow and a mean temp of 36.9F. There appear to be some errors in snow data earlier than 1885 (id have to go to DTX and look at the archaic books to find out) as xmacis would have the snowfall at 79.4" & 11.5", but regardless, massive difference.

 The Laura Ingalls Wilder book, "The Long Winter", while admittedly a bit embellished, is a fascinating read which takes place from late summer 1880 thru spring 1881 in what is now North Dakota. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Winter_(novel)

The following book, "Little Town on the Prairie", while not specifically weather focused, discusses the extraordinarily mild winter 1881-82 in Dakota. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Town_on_the_Prairie

Daily newspapers accounts also talked about the harshness of the 1880-81 winter and the remarkably mild 1881-82 winter.

 

 

[GaWx]

 Chance for record low monthly NOAA PDO increasing for July. Current record is -3.8. It’s possible it will even end up just below -4:

 

[PhiEaglesfan712]

The JRA-3Q dataset is not updated for June 2025 so the MEI V2 will be late this month.