Winter 2025-26

[CAPE]

Latest edition of the Euro Weeklies continues to advertise a favorable h5 look for early Dec( and beyond fwiw).

[Bob Chill]

8 hours ago, WxUSAF said:

The stratosphere is much more predictable than the troposphere, so the long range ensembles do have “skill” beyond the typical 8-10 day sensible weather prediction limit. I want to say there is skill to 30-40 days?? It seems guidance often tries to predict these strat warming events a little too quickly and there are can kicks, but that’s my anecdotal observation.

We need to stop the strat talk STAT! If there's any winter weenie index over the last 10+ years that basically ensures a nasty struggle then epic fail... its the Amwx SSW index. The more posts about it the less chance of anything good happening. There's literally 100s if not 1000s worth of post data backing this up. 

I mean sure, scientifically a SSW can be a precursor to blocking and cold/snow in the east but the more it gets hyped here, the less chance of it working out. This is a fact. But weenies gotta ween and my yards gotta fail. Thanks man

[Maestrobjwa]

13 minutes ago, Bob Chill said:

We need to stop the strat talk STAT! If there's any winter weenie index over the last 10+ years that basically ensures a nasty struggle then epic fail... its the Amwx SSW index. The more posts about it the less chance of anything good happening. There's literally 100s if not 1000s worth of post data backing this up. 

I mean sure, scientifically a SSW can be a precursor to blocking and cold/snow in the east but the more it gets hyped here, the less chance of it working out. This is a fact. But weenies gotta ween and my yards gotta fail. Thanks man

This is exactly why my question was covered in skepticism. These days I mostly ignore strat talk because it's failed so often over the last decade...and the one time it really worked the effects of it were too late for us down herea (February 2018 with effects in March 2018). We did get some first day of Spring snow though so that was kinda funny!

[WVclimo]

2 hours ago, Maestrobjwa said:

This is exactly why my question was covered in skepticism. These days I mostly ignore strat talk because it's failed so often over the last decade...and the one time it really worked the effects of it were too late for us down herea (February 2018 with effects in March 2018). We did get some first day of Spring snow though so that was kinda funny!

I got 15” from that 3/21 storm. Haven’t had a double-digit snowfall since then.

[Stormchaserchuck1]

The problem with Stratosphere warming is that they are common. The whole Stratosphere moves in one direction: stronger or weaker. 1/2 of the time it's warmer. 1/2 the time it's colder. Because of fluctuations, there are on average 1-2 top 30 percentile Stratosphere warmings per Winter. 

This one coming up doesn't look record breaking strong, it's looks pretty average as a SSW, actually. It would be weird to go to March without seeing one. Still, there is a lagged -NAO correlation that has a pretty high correlation coefficient. But at the current strength that is being modeled it's not a "change the whole Winter scenario". 

[mitchnick]

8 hours ago, Bob Chill said:

We need to stop the strat talk STAT! If there's any winter weenie index over the last 10+ years that basically ensures a nasty struggle then epic fail... its the Amwx SSW index. The more posts about it the less chance of anything good happening. There's literally 100s if not 1000s worth of post data backing this up. 

I mean sure, scientifically a SSW can be a precursor to blocking and cold/snow in the east but the more it gets hyped here, the less chance of it working out. This is a fact. But weenies gotta ween and my yards gotta fail. Thanks man

Sounds like you woke up on the wrong side of the cave. 

[Bob Chill]

4 hours ago, mitchnick said:

Sounds like you woke up on the wrong side of the cave. 

Ha! It was a poor attempt at humor. When we're in the middle of a 55-60 degree stretch in Jan with hopeless D10+ progs, SSW talk enters the chat like clockwork. And it never amounts to much lolol. Imho, some winters just want to work and others don't no matter what. Wasted blocking and random storms in the middle of futile indices are as common as typical/predictable stuff that produces. 

The early signs of the upcoming winter are promising. I think we can all agree on that. I've suspected we're on the front side of a longer duration blocking cycle for a couple of years now. Get things right in the AO/NAO region for the balance of winter and a ratter is prob off the table. Big winters outside of mod ninos are notoriously hard to predict. 13-14 was pessimistic leading in and we all fondly remember that one. I certainly didn't see it coming in Nov. The early Dec storm was a signal but then it got crazy warm before legit winter set in for 3 straight months.

Any event during the first half of Dec is usually a reliable sign of an "acceptable" winter. So far it looks pretty good in general for that this year. Time will tell as always