Winter 2025-26

[Bob Chill]

3 hours ago, Ji said:

storms are the biggest crapshoot but without cold--it wouldnt matter. one thing that i hate about ninas is that we need phasing typically to get something good and we suck at phasing at the right time. usually very little gulf action 

So far it looks like the "nina" is weak sauce so I'm not really expecting classic nina climo dominating door to door. I think other variables like the ao/epo/nao will have more influence on our sensible wx and I wouldn't be surprised if there is split flow at times. Im really liking early ao/nao signs right now. 

I'm still feeling mediocre about snowfall but that comes with the territory and we're pretty much always northern stream dominant in all enso phases except for ninos.  However, get a -2sd ao/nao going and it opens the door for a hybrid storm that passes underneath us. Those can work here but not without anomalous blocking. Its been so long since we've had an extended blocking period that we all expect it to not happen lol but I'm feeling unusually optimistic about it until further notice 

[Stormchaserchuck1]

Yeah, the Nina is weak sauce right now. Going back to June 2023, 21/29 months have been +PNA (CPC). It's surprising because we've had 2 "most negative monthly PDO on record" periods during that time, and the last 15 months have been cool ENSO.. but tracking 500mb all the time, the -PNA tendency has not been the same since the 23-24 Strong Nino -- it was happening all the time before then, now it's not sustaining more than a short period of time. It would have to kind of come out of nowhere to be a -PNA Winter this year, possible, but not as likely as the 2017-2023 period. 

Precip is definitely not a El Nino STJ right now, but I don't see why we can't have storms track across the Tenn valley and then into the Mid Atlantic this Winter. I think there is a -AO tendency with negative SLP 60-90N over the warm season (strong Summer -> Winter correlation since 2012) this year. Lots of cold H5 across the N. Hemisphere this year too, including the lowest 500mb reading on record for August this last August. 2020-2023 was not cold at H5 in the Northern Hemisphere at all. The strongest leading correlation I've found to Winter cold/snow is preceding year total H5 cold across the N. Hemisphere. 

[bncho]

it seems like we've narrowed in closer towards a more unified consensus. two questions: is a dead ratter like 22-23 off the table, and is the ceiling higher than 24-25?

[Stormchaserchuck1]

16 minutes ago, bncho said:

it seems like we've narrowed in closer towards a more unified consensus. two questions: is a dead ratter like 22-23 off the table, and is the ceiling higher than 24-25?

24-25 was the coldest Winter since 14-15. Something similar to last year is possible this year, as lot of the same conditions are reoccurring. 

We had 2 favorable patterns in 22-23, in December and March. 6/7 times out of 10, those patterns would deliver a SECS. It just didn't happen that way that year - a repeat of 22-23 though may not be as bad as you would think. Jan and Feb were really warm that Winter though: +QBO coupled with La Nina to have a strong 10mb vortex in 22-23.. we have a -QBO this Winter, and the long range Euro ensembles are already looking like they want to do a Stratosphere warming in a few weeks (which would correlate with -AO late Dec into early Jan (about 70% likely)).