Winter 2025-26

[psuhoffman]

11 hours ago, bncho said:

speaking of the jan 96 blizzard, what happened to that late february storm that prevented something like that from happening? was it just classic nina tendencies? in other words, what went wrong?

The upper level low to the NW of the STJ wave acted as a suppressive feature instead of phasing in any way.  The upper low acted more like a TPV instead of a typical upper low in the end.  That was one of the biggest mistakes I made the week leading up to that, "as the upper levels trended better the surface was worse" I kept saying, but I was not correctly seeing, and I think @Bob Chill was the first to identify, the upper low was actually the problem not a solution.  Typically an upper low tracking just to our NW would indicate a surface track maybe even too far NW for what we want, not suppressed, but not if that upper low acts like a polar vortex, and squashes everything around it instead of interacting with it.  

If you are asking why it did that though I don't know.  But there must be something about a Nina though because there are a lot of examples of storms that hit that area (immediate coast from NC/VA Beach up the Delmarva) in Nina's.  My best guess is it's a matter of the energy balance between the northern stream and the southern stream.  You have a strong enough STJ wave and it can bully its way without much NS help.  You get a balance between the two and you can get a phased event where the NS phases with a STJ wave and get a storm that way.  But if the balance of energy is too skewed towards the NS, it acts as a suppressive force and squashes everything.  This is our biggest issue with Ninas.  We are too far south to typically get a lot of snow from NS dominant waves.  We can get some, a clipper, a NS wave that tracks further south than usual, but they aren't going to be huge snowstorms here, they can amplify along the east coast and get places further to our north with a bigger event...but were too far southwest typically to get a big storm that way.  And if the NS acts as a suppressive force we end up too far north for the weaker STJ waves you get in a nina.  So we end up in between.  That is why the mean snow minimum for ninas is centered right over us.  The odds of an above average snowfall season go up to our north and south.  

[arlwx12]

Not so fast...

Winter 2025-2026 forecast from NOAA. See maps, snow explanation.

Winter is coming − but how cold is it going to be? Federal forecasters from NOAA's Climate Prediction Center gave us their answer Oct. 16 in their annual winter outlook.

According to the forecast, a warmer-than-average winter is most likely across the southern tier of the nation, as well as in California and along much of the East Coast and Florida. Colder-than-normal conditions are expected in the Pacific Northwest and across the upper Midwest.

As for snow and rain, the northern Rockies and Great Lakes region are most likely to see plenty of precipitation this winter, the Climate Prediction Center said. However, a drier-than-average winter is expected along the nation's southern tier, especially in the Southeast. (snip)

Gottschalck said that warmer-than-normal temperatures are most likely for California, the southern Great Basin, the southern Rockies, the Southwest eastward to Texas, the Southeast and the coastal mid-Atlantic.(snip)

((but Accuweather dissents:))

AccuWeather also released its winter forecast earlier in October, and the private forecaster said that a "bookend winter" is on tap for the central and eastern U.S., with the biggest storms expected around the opening and the final weeks of the season. "It can be an intense stormy winter for areas of the country, particularly across the Midwest, Great Lakes, Ohio Valley, Northeast and parts of the mid-Atlantic," AccuWeather lead long-range meteorologist Paul Pastelok said. (snip)

 

[WxUSAF]

NOAA seasonal forecasters are almost always ENSO copy-pasted

[mitchnick]

23 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

A warmer enso actually correlates slightly warmer for us, but what makes a warm enso "snowier" is that it gives us multiple ways to "win".  We can still get a colder pattern sometimes in warm enso...and then it's a possible 2003, 2010 type thing.  Those are the once in a blue moon blockbuster winters.  But even in a warmer year we can still "win" if we just time up one of those STJ storms with a rare colder period.  1983 and 2016 for example.  And of course we get lots of years somewhere in between...but with an active STJ we just have more chances to get snow, even if overall the winter isn't cold...we just have to time up a couple of the storms.  

The problem with a fading nina is that we don't get the advantage that actually makes warmer enso better...the stronger STJ, which typically doesn't take effect until we get an actual warm enso.  So I dont think there is really an advantage to a fading cold enso for our snowfall.  

That said, I do think a fluke can always happen.  Something like 2014 for example, which was a wall to wall enso neutral year, could happen but it's just so rare it likely wouldn't show up in such a small sample just by random probabilities.  If we had records that went back longer we probably would eventually see a snowy winter in a cold enso fading to neutral, IMO.  But I think we can say it's not MORE likely that if the enso simply stays cold since we do have some examples of a snowy winter in a wall to wall cold enso winter...and absolutely NONE in a cold enso fading to neutral.  Again, due to small sample I think that is somewhat a fluke, so saying it is WORSE is a step to far imo, but saying it is better also has no support.  

Thing is, and who knows how much, if any, it matters, but we are likely not going to see an official Niña (5 consecutive tri-monthlies Enso 3.4 average temps at or below -.5C) this winter if consensus modeling is correct. Not that the RONI won't be in Niña territory as well as Chuck's favorite subsurface readings, but it is something that "might" make a difference. In fact, Enso 3.4 temps are struggling to even maintain a -.5C reading over the past month+. 

https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/indices/wksst9120.for

I'll repeat...who knows.

[IronTy]

20 hours ago, beavis1729 said:

A major storm recently hit western Alaska, causing huge impacts and damage to coastal communities. 

https://ak-wx.blogspot.com/2025/10/storm-catastrophe.html?m=1

That must be it, I guess it pulled arctic air down out of Russia and cooled the surface temps on the Russian coast.  

[psuhoffman]

2 hours ago, mitchnick said:

Thing is, and who knows how much, if any, it matters, but we are likely not going to see an official Niña (5 consecutive tri-monthlies Enso 3.4 average temps at or below -.5C) this winter if consensus modeling is correct. Not that the RONI won't be in Niña territory as well as Chuck's favorite subsurface readings, but it is something that "might" make a difference. In fact, Enso 3.4 temps are struggling to even maintain a -.5C reading over the past month+. 

https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/indices/wksst9120.for

I'll repeat...who knows.

Good point. Both the observation and whether it even matters. 6/7 of the wall to wall cold season enso neutral years the last 30 years were below avg snowfall at BWI.  The numbers suggest our chances of a snowy winter don’t change much between a weak Nina and enso neutral.  Actually what’s happened to enso neutral winters accounts for most of the degradation of our snow climo. Our typical snowfall during enso neutral has degraded worse than any other subset to the point there isn’t much difference between Nina and neutral now.   
 

To really simplify it we have about a 60% chance of a snowy winter in a Nino and a 20% chance in all other winters.  Overall in any given year we only have about a 30% chance of a snowy winter. Our climo has become an occasional fluke snowy winter or two surrounded by many many years of dreg. That trend started well before this current string of futility.  

[Stormchaserchuck1]

7 hours ago, mitchnick said:

Thing is, and who knows how much, if any, it matters, but we are likely not going to see an official Niña (5 consecutive tri-monthlies Enso 3.4 average temps at or below -.5C) this winter if consensus modeling is correct. Not that the RONI won't be in Niña territory as well as Chuck's favorite subsurface readings, but it is something that "might" make a difference. In fact, Enso 3.4 temps are struggling to even maintain a -.5C reading over the past month+. 

https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/indices/wksst9120.for

I'll repeat...who knows.

On the surface the La Nina has really struggled to get going lately.. we probably won't hit 5 straight months <-0.5 in the ONI. Of course, because of global warming there would now be 60% el nino's and 40% la nina's, so because the focus is on the Hadley/Mid-latitude Cell meeting point, the RONI is good at better gauging this Hadley Cell expansion/contraction.. The RONI is solidly Weak Nina. I found that for Winter PNA pattern the following is true:

Weak Nina: +50dm -PNA

Moderate Nina: +80dm -PNA

Strong Nina: +100dm -PNA

Weak Nino: +40dm +PNA
Moderate Nino: +70dm +PNA

Strong Nino: +120dm +PNA

So there is difference in the PNA correlation depending on how strong the event gets.. and it looks like this will comfortably not go above Weak. Here's the SOI.. despite 14 straight +SOI months, the SOI hasn't had a +10 monthly reading since early 2023

Subsurface is also not impressive.. barely holding Weak Nina ground

More chance for variation in the Winter N. Pacific pattern with Weaker negative ENSO

[Ruin]

guess whos back back again