2026-2027 El Nino

[Stormchaserchuck1]

6 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

I'm not arguing for a big winter next year...all I am trying to say is that nothing is set in stone yet. This is why I usually don't get into it this early. You end up defending a hypothetical position that you haven't even taken yet.

+QBO/east-based El Nino and -PDO is a very warm Winter composite.. it's early and those things can change (Nino could be more west-based, look at how Nino 4 is currently warming.. and PDO may rise through the year? - I don't know, Feb was <-1.00) 

[40/70 Benchmark]

13 minutes ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

+QBO/east-based El Nino and -PDO is a very warm Winter composite.. it's early and those things can change (Nino could be more west-based, look at how Nino 4 is currently warming.. and PDO may rise through the year? - I don't know, Feb was <-1.00) 

Agreed, but I doubt we have a -PDO next season, and I'm also not sure it's east-based.

The Pacific is changing....I don't think you are going to pull off an appreciable warm ENSO and maintain -PDO. We just saw that two years ago and it isn't happening again...never has.

[40/70 Benchmark]

We just flipped from this:

To this: 

And now a healthy WARM ENSO is going to revert it back??

Shoot me for not buying in instantaneously and having pause-

[40/70 Benchmark]

Just now, 40/70 Benchmark said:

We just flipped from this:

To this: 

And now a healthy WARM ENSO is going to revert it back??

Shoot me for not buying in instantaneously and having pause-

AGAIN....don't mistake this for me saying it has to be cold in the east next year...not what I am implying.

[snowman19]

Agreed, but I doubt we have a -PDO next season, and I'm also not sure it's east-based.
The Pacific is changing....I don't think you are going to pull off an appreciable warm ENSO and maintain -PDO. We just pulled it off two years ago and it isn't happening again...never has.

This event may finally cause the stagnant, record breaking warm pool in the WPAC to move. This may be the one to finally flip the Pacific:

[roardog]

16 minutes ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

+QBO/east-based El Nino and -PDO is a very warm Winter composite.. it's early and those things can change (Nino could be more west-based, look at how Nino 4 is currently warming.. and PDO may rise through the year? - I don't know, Feb was <-1.00) 

Is a +PDO combined those other parameters really that much colder?

[Stormchaserchuck1]

1 minute ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

We just flipped from this:

To this: 

And now a healthy WARM ENSO is going to revert it back??

Shoot me for not buying in instantaneously and having pause-

Believe it or not Summer sea-level pressure 60-90N is a great lead for what kind of upper latitude pattern will happen in the Winter.. since 2012 it's flipped every single time. We want negative SLP June-August

[40/70 Benchmark]

Just now, snowman19 said:

This event may finally cause the stagnant, record breaking warm pool in the WPAC to move. This may be the one to finally flip the Pacific:

 

 

 

 

Yes...and maybe that happens and it's still warm, or warm everywhere....too early to entertain that or dispute it.

[Stormchaserchuck1]

Just now, roardog said:

Does a +PDO combined those other parameters really that much colder?

You will tend to get more of an Aleutian low, which drops a trough into the eastern US. I guess the west would still be quite warm in that scenario. 

[40/70 Benchmark]

Just now, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

Believe it or not Summer sea-level pressure 60-90N is a great lead for what kind of upper latitude pattern will happen in the Winter.. since 2012 it's flipped every single time. We want negative SLP June-August

I have no issue with that.....it's why I always like to compare my work with your NAO formula before publishing.

[Stormchaserchuck1]

Just now, 40/70 Benchmark said:

I have no issue with that.....it's why I always like to compare my work with your NAO formula before publishing.

Yeah, North Atlantic SSTAs and tripole or not is also a good indicator.. a few things that are determined in the summer. 

[40/70 Benchmark]

2 minutes ago, roardog said:

Does a +PDO combined those other parameters really that much colder?

 

1 minute ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

You will tend to get more of an Aleutian low, which drops a trough into the eastern US. I guess the west would still be quite warm in that scenario. 

 

2 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Yes...and maybe that happens and it's still warm, or warm everywhere....too early to entertain that or dispute it.

This is my point...+PDO doesn't guarantee a cold winter...it merely increases the probability of the warmer west/colder east pattern. If we end up with like a 2.6 event, then it won't matter.

[Stormchaserchuck1]

Just now, 40/70 Benchmark said:

 

 

This is my point...+PDO doesn't guarantee a cold winter...it merely increases the probability of the warmer west/colder east pattern. If we end up with like a 2.6 event, then it won't matter.

Mid latitudes are kind of on fire the last few years.. I would just like to see a trough 45N in the Pacific

[40/70 Benchmark]

1 minute ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

Yeah, North Atlantic SSTAs and tripole or not is also a good indicator.. a few things that are determined in the summer. 

I remember you telling me about the Indian ocean Aug-Nov being a good indicator of winter WPO...it looked strongly positive all summer and into the fall, before flipping drastically at the last moment. Looked kind of neutralish, but the WPO ended up strongly negative.

[Stormchaserchuck1]

5 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

I remember you telling me about the Indian ocean Aug-Nov being a good indicator of winter WPO...it looked strongly positive all summer and into the fall, before flipping drastically at the last moment. Looked kind of neutralish, but the WPO ended up strongly negative.

As we progress more into the Fall the Indian Ocean SSTAs are a good indicator of the WPO setting up for the Winter. 

Check out the early season lead though...

Pretty strong May-July

You can make an index with the N Pacific cold pool at -0.4 vs Indian Ocean and ENSO +0.5 and have a 80% probability indicator for Winter WPO. 

[40/70 Benchmark]

2 minutes ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

As we progress more into the Fall the Indian Ocean SSTAs are a good indicator of the WPO setting up for the Winter. 

Check out the early season lead though...

Pretty strong May-July

You make an index with the N Pacific cold pool at -0.4 and Indian Ocean and ENSO +0.5 and have a 80% probability indicator. 

WPO is the index I have struggled with the most......I went big -WPO winter 2024-2025 and it was EPO instead....this past season I went big -EPO and it was -WPO. N Pac is a PIA.

[Stormchaserchuck1]

1 minute ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

WPO is the index I have struggled with the most......I went big -WPO winter 2024-2025 and it was EPO instead....this past season I went big -EPO and it was -WPO. N Pac is a PIA.

Western Pacific and Indian Ocean seems to definitely lead Winter WPO, SSTA-wise. 

[40/70 Benchmark]

4 minutes ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

Western Pacific and Indian Ocean seems to definitely lead Winter WPO, SSTA-wise. 

Do you have an image from this past fall to illustrate how it lead the big -WPO winter?

[Stormchaserchuck1]

13 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Do you have an image from this past fall to illustrate how it lead the big -WPO winter?

Pretty strong opposite correlation (-WPO)

Sept-Nov 2025

Before +WPO Winter (opposite for -WPO)

Clear pattern

[Stormchaserchuck1]

Warm and muggy today, mid 70s in March. It's hard to remember it's still just March as we've had so many of these days this month. The NAO is very positive, but there has been a less than ideal 500mb pattern for very warm days this month in the W. Pacific (+EPO/+WPO usually drives major March warm ups - the WPO hasn't been positive this month). 

[michsnowfreak]

Going to be interesting to see how the cansips evolves this summer. It had the cold winter lakes/east look last summer and fall while the other seasonals were mild. Its showing another cold winter in those same areas for 2026-27.

[40/70 Benchmark]

1 minute ago, michsnowfreak said:

Going to be interesting to see how the cansips evolves this summer. It had the cold winter lakes/east look last summer and fall while the other seasonals were mild. Its showing another cold winter in those same areas for 2026-27.

My early hunch is it's right, but like I said....we shall see. So, so early...

[mitchnick]

Idk what's going to come of next winter, but this Stormsurf link has a lot of info and I've posted it before. Watching it the past 10-14 days, I'm not seeing off the Cfs links the things that were showing up back in 23/24. First of all, the SSTA plumes are starting to show a much weaker Nino. Likewise, as Chuck's mentioned, the SOI ain't cooperating.  But what I find more compelling is the 3 month MJO forecast. The westerly wind anomalies represented by the yellow/red, seem to be stuck west of the dateline except for a brief intrusion east mid/late April-mid May. Moreover, there remains pockets of blue (easterly wind anomalies) scattered east of the dateline through the end of the forecast period in late June.

https://www.stormsurf.com/page2/links/ensocurr.html

I know it's early, but if that forecast doesn’t start showing some substantial changes, strong or super Niño forecasts look like a tough sell.

[40/70 Benchmark]

10 hours ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

Pretty strong opposite correlation (-WPO)

Sept-Nov 2025

Before +WPO Winter (opposite for -WPO)

Clear pattern

Chuck, thanks so much. Two questions....I have to assume it's tougher to get the -WPO loading SST pattern ("C") during an El Niño?

Secondly, do you have a similar schematic for an EPO correlation?

TIA.

 

[snowman19]

[bluewave]

22 hours ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

IMHO the default position should be that it will relocate given a strong enough El Nino because that is what has always happened...sure, you could argue that the magnitude and residence of this particular warm pool is unprecedented, but I can tell you what else is unprecedented....ANY type of pattern or SST signature becoming a permanent fixture in the hemisphere (general warming notwithstanding), so in that sense we have plenty of evidence. This is akin to me arguing that the warm east/cold west/+WPO pattern wasn't permanent, which we now know for certain.

This basin-wide warming across the North Pacific overwhelming the PDO is something new. 

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-025-02482-z

Pan-basin warming now overshadows robust Pacific Decadal Oscillation

The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) has served as a key index linking basin-scale climate variability to marine ecosystem changes in the North Pacific. However, recent apparent breakdowns of PDO–ecosystem correlations have raised concerns about the stability of the mode and its continued relevance in a warming climate. Here we show that basin-wide warming now overwhelms PDO-related sea surface temperature (SST) variability, although neither the PDO’s spatial pattern nor its strength have changed. We introduce the pan-basin pattern as a complementary index to describe the non-stationary SST baseline of the North Pacific. Regional SSTs increasingly reflect the superposition of these two signals, providing an explanation for weakened or inverted PDO–ecosystem correlations. Future use of the PDO index in management will require discerning the effects of internal dynamics from those of absolute changes in SST as extreme and no-analogue ocean conditions driven by interacting natural variability and anthropogenic warming become more common.

 

 

 

[MJO812]

This is an interesting take.

[bluewave]

On 3/25/2026 at 10:46 AM, LakePaste25 said:

23-24 reached super criteria based off of traditional ONI, which peaked at +2.1C for NDJ. Using the new RONI however, it peaked at moderate to strong.

23-24 was similar in strength for total Nino 1+2 to Nino 4 SST warmth and would have registered a peak ONI around +2.4 C had they not changed the baseline making the departure artificially smaller.

This is one of the challenges of measuring the El Niño in a warming world. The winter temperatures in North America and 500 ridge was of super El Niño intensity.

But the stronger subtropical ridging didn’t allow for the typical Aleutian Trough strength and the Nino trough we typically see in the Southern and Eastern U.S. This could be a function of the continuing mid-latitude marine heatwaves overlapping wit the ENSO influence like we have frequently seen over the last decade. 

This effectively means that a super El Niño using the weaker RONI started somewhere near +1.4C with the SST configuration we had in 23-24.

 

 

[snowman19]

The Atlantic is very interesting now too….have we finally, at long last flipped to a -AMO cycle? The last time we were in a -AMO cycle was the tail end of the 1970’s through 1995…..  @Stormchaserchuck1
 

[GaWx]

 How many times within a short period of time is Eric Webb going to Tweet essentially the same thing regarding his feeling about a near certain super Nino being jump-started by a very strong WWB? Does anyone recall when he kept Tweeting over and over about a near record strong WWB occurring in Feb. that never occurred? He loves to be bombastic as this is just one example. His being repeatedly bombastic doesn’t make it the near certainty he wants us to think it is. Snowman, Don, and myself commented about this being a big bust in the 25-26 thread: