2026-2027 Record-breaking El Nino

[GaWx]

-SOI is up to 87 straight days. Record is 1998’s 100 days. I don’t know if it will make it to 100.

-1015+ Darwin streak ended at 26 days, breaking old record back to 1991 of 20 days 

[bluewave]

2 hours ago, Keith Central PA said:

Shocked the Euro is not a blowtorch for most of the country this winter..Maybe because of the strength of the Nino, people are expecting 97-98, 15-16.. Super Nino is always warm. Maybe its seeing other factors..will be interesting to see how this nino performs 

I am not that surprised since these seasonal forecast models can’t do much better than general climatology or correlations.

Never saw a seasonal model forecast an extreme pattern before it actually happened except for 2013-2014.

So I don’t expect the actual details to begin to emerge much before the model runs near the beginning of December. 

All we know for sure at this point is that this will be the strongest El Niño on record. All previous super events shared the one common aspect of warm winters.

But there is always room for variability with each new event in some regard to past ones such as ridge and trough locations. 

[Stormchaserchuck1]

There is a huge statistical misperception. The odds of getting warm 5/5 times is not that low. Record breaking Nino's should probably be warm realistically 65-70% of the time. 

[Stormchaserchuck1]

4 hours ago, bluewave said:

This is an even stronger east based event than 1997-1998 was. The charts below are for what actually verified in C and  F departures for that era.  It was more extreme than general El Niño correlations. 

 

 

So we are going to base this Winter on the 91-20 average? I can tell you right now that will be warm. I would rather do the most recent 30-years. 

[mitchnick]

Some Euro January temp maps off WxBell courtesy MA forum. Top map is from the July forecast and bottom is August's. 

[bluewave]

26 minutes ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

So we are going to base this Winter on the 91-20 average? I can tell you right now that will be warm. I would rather do the most recent 30-years. 

That post was about the 1997-1998 winter which followed 1961-1990 climatology. This winter will be using 1991-2020 normals. Rankings will be based on the 1895 to 2027 full period of record.

[Stormchaserchuck1]

7 minutes ago, bluewave said:

That post was about the 1997-1998 winter which followed 1961-1990 climatology. This winter will be using 1991-2020 normals. Rankings will be based on the 1895 to 2027 full period of record.

Global warming is obviously occurring? 

[Stormchaserchuck1]

20 minutes ago, mitchnick said:

Some Euro January temp maps off WxBell courtesy MA forum. Top map is from the July forecast and bottom is August's. 

I'm loving the -500mb over the Arctic this warm season. 2024 and 2025 are actually good analogs there, and they both had Winter ridging 60-90N. 

[bluewave]

7 minutes ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

I'm loving the -500mb over the Arctic this warm season. 2024 and 2025 are actually good analogs there, and they both had Winter ridging 60-90N. 

2024 and 2025 didn’t have the deep trough north of Alaska like this June and July. It was displaced closer to Greenland and not as strong. Could be a result of the rebound following the stratospheric warming event last November.

[Stormchaserchuck1]

2 minutes ago, bluewave said:

2024 and 2025 didn’t have the deep trough north of Alaska like this June and July. It was displaced closer to Greenland and not as strong. Could be a result of the rebound following the stratospheric warming event last November.

Since 2017 the whole arctic (60-90N) is the leading indicator for Winter pattern 60-90N. It usually reverses. 

[bluewave]

6 minutes ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

Since 2017 the whole arctic (60-90N) is the leading indicator for Winter pattern 60-90N. It usually reverses. 

The pressures in general across the Arctic have been lower during the summers since 2013 with more ridging in the midlatitudes.

There has been quite a bit of volatility in regard to the winter higher latitude blocking since the 13-14 winter.

It’s been tough to hold a similar winter pattern across the Arctic for more than two winters in a row since 09-10.

We actually have had the greatest degree of volatility from month to month and year to year since then. 

[Stormchaserchuck1]

1 hour ago, bluewave said:

The pressures in general across the Arctic have been lower during the summers since 2013 with more ridging in the midlatitudes.

There has been quite a bit of volatility in regard to the winter higher latitude blocking since the 13-14 winter.

It’s been tough to hold a similar winter pattern across the Arctic for more than two winters in a row since 09-10.

We actually have had the greatest degree of volatility from month to month and year to year since then. 

Well we had a 5030dm trough yesterday, and now models warm up the area north of Alaska to +250dm for several days. Really cold periods are reversing. Montana had snow in late June then it was an all time record high in Billings, MT, 111 degrees (beating their old all time record of 108) a few weeks later. DJF 25-26 was cold, then March 26 was record warm by the largest margin ever seen, same thing in 24-25. I don't think the long term mean can really go very cold right now, but we may get periods of below average. 

Check out the correlation since 2012 though. 2019 was the warmest summer and then 19-20 was the coldest Winter of the period 60-90N. 

 

[bluewave]

4 minutes ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

Well we had a 5030dm trough yesterday, and now models warm up the area north of Alaska to +250dm for several days. Really cold periods are reversing. Montana had snow in late June then it was an all time record high in Billings, MT, 111 degrees (beating their old all time record of 108) a few weeks later. DJF 25-26 was cold, then March 26 was record warm by the largest margin ever seen. I don't think the long term mean can really go very cold right now, but we may get periods of below average. 

Check out the correlation since 2012 though. 2019 was the warmest summer and then 19-20 was the coldest Winter of the period 60-90N. 

 

2020 was a really wild swing for the Arctic. We had the very strong polar vortex during the winter and a late season snow in early May. Then the warmest Arctic summer since 2012 with the Arctic sea ice almost as low. December had a 40” snowstorm in BGM followed by a record rainstorm and warm up on Christmas. 

[EasternLI]

Maybe the NH is starting to come around slowly. If we use the JMA composite for warm enso in August. We see this wave train from the Pacific through NA. Then looking over the AIFS-ensembles 12z run, here is a 5 day mean. There is a wave train visible in the Pacific through NA similar to the one shown on the composite.

 

[Jebman]

10 hours ago, TriPol said:

Super El Nino gives us a super sub-tropical jet which, if merged with the pacific jet or arctic jet during a cold time in december, january or feb, can give us historic blizzards. There is going to be an incredibly active STJ Autumn/Winter. We just need a bit of cold air to go with that and BOOM. We have never ever seen anything like this before -- it's going to be very exciting to watch. 

Couldn't have said this better myself. Stock up on grub, IPA's, shovels and salt. This could be bigger than anything ever experienced before in the Mid Atlantic.

[annunciated]

9 minutes ago, Jebman said:

Couldn't have said this better myself. Stock up on grub, IPA's, shovels and salt. This could be bigger than anything ever experienced before in the Mid Atlantic.

We need a little more luck down here in GA, but otherwise I do agree! We have to just wait and see.

[GaWx]

9 minutes ago, annunciated said:

We need a little more luck down here in GA, but otherwise I do agree! We have to just wait and see.

A 3rd year in a row of measurable snow down here on/near the coast of GA would be amazing since it would be unprecedented in the modern day record book (back to 1870s).

[so_whats_happening]

14 hours ago, LakePaste25 said:

That was me who was dismissing the MEI awhile ago and you still don’t see me posting about it. Just not a fan of it. It’s equally weighting all variables, only uses one dataset (JRA-55), and like ensonerd mentioned it’s limited to the first EOF. I felt like it made the 2023-24 event weaker than it was even compared to the RONI, thanks to the rare -PMM that went with it. 

This is an EOF encompassed by several EOFs though (5 to be exact) so in some ways it does have multiple like many of the other indexes do just not the repetitiveness of one defining several different areas typically 2 EOFs exist per index. RONI hit 1.4, MEI hit 1.1 while SSTs showed roughly 2.

You could make the argument of breaking down the east and west of SSTs as well as wind but since it still currently covers those regions I don't see how creating another EOF would improve the skill outside what we see. As 40/70 said it is strictly a metric for coupling within the tropics and I think it has done rather fine for virtually every Nino/Nina thus far. Again slow to show rapid changes but still shows when those changes occur.

I would never put stock in one index to tell the whole story of what is going on whether it is SST, wind, OHC, OLR, etc. That is why the multivariate is an awesome tool NOAA could have done away with it when the old data was lost but there were many Meteorologists that reached out and wished to keep this going for reasons.

[so_whats_happening]

13 hours ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

My mistake...I guess I spoke out of turn and should have double-checked.

Thanks.

I'm going to stick with that source, though in an effort to be homogeneous. 

No worries, I am not sure why they decided to have two updating values.

13 hours ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

None of us are perfect...best any forecaster can do is try to keep an open mind, be willing to admit error and look to improve. My outlooks got a lot better the moment I stopped perceiving alternative view points as a threat and tried incorporating them....truth is that every individual has something to offer.

Always trying to improve is an important aspect in life. Criticisms are an important part in this field as it helps build ideas and potentially new technologies for us all to use and benefit from. 

[so_whats_happening]

10 hours ago, ensonerd1233e343 said:

Well the second eof i would add would be more reprsenttive of central pacfic el ninos for example in the dec jan eofs the -olr is further east then many central pac ninos and so is the minimum mslp correlation on the mei map l you can also see the sst are more favorable for ep nino. As for v wind no its not as important as u wind in the dynamics of enso sure v wind can be an indirrect enso forcer but it isnt as direct as u wind because u wind triggers the down/upwelling kelvin waves which are critical to enso v wind can do no such thing. In terms of wind and slp going hand in hand thats true so if we got rid of v wind i would say we can count things all the same. As for the wwbs yes they are important but im saying an enso event shouldnt be punished inhertly bc its wwbs were 20 degrees west of typical that could still produce a strong event just more center based then typical for strong events.  As for ohc the reason I was adding it wass because mei is designed to measure how coupled the system is and to me high ohc is part of that coupling as well s ocean sfc currents. 

In terms of mid lattidues I dont really have anything to say on that tbh

To me this would more so impact modoki or similar to 2023-24 Nino type events if we had a CP EOF versus what is currently shown above, i'm not sure having a second EOF would impact the logistics of an EP Nino like we are currently seeing take shape. The amount of CP or west based Nino events is rather low and anything typically below the threshold of moderate status (i.e. weak to neutral) in either ENSO state tends to have overriding features that dictate what midlatitudes tend to see, they just add a little flair from the tropics.

V wind is important because if winds are converging the forcing in the U direction will be stronger versus that of a diffluent flow which would have less umphh to move waters. 

OHC is not going to dictate the strength of a Nino/Nina event always. Take for instance the Nino of 1986-1988. ONI reached 1.5 in the summer of 1987 in this multi year event, RONI actually peaked at in the winter of 1986/87 at 1.5. MEI recorded it a staggering 2.1 in the beginning of summer of 1987. OHC on the other hand barely scraping to over one and it did so for 1 month. These other variables dictate how much the OHC will rise or fall so they encompass this aspect already just not the raw number of OHC. The OHC tends to rhyme with ENSO state but never the full story of the strength of the ENSO state.

I wanted to add too look at the OHC for 1983/84 after the super nino comparing it to the other metrics listed below. Again OHC rhymes (often) but is never the reason for strength.

https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso/roni/    RONI

https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso/oni/v6/    ONI

https://psl.noaa.gov/enso/mei/  MEI

https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ocean/index/heat_content_index.txt  OHC

[MJO812]

Direct Weather's preliminary winter outlook ( yes i know its way too early)

 

 

[so_whats_happening]

4 hours ago, EasternLI said:

Maybe the NH is starting to come around slowly. If we use the JMA composite for warm enso in August. We see this wave train from the Pacific through NA. Then looking over the AIFS-ensembles 12z run, here is a 5 day mean. There is a wave train visible in the Pacific through NA similar to the one shown on the composite.

 

Medium to long range in every model are trying really hard to disrupt the consistent ridging episodes near Japan and east of there. Let's see how things shape up mid to late month.

[Ephesians2]

29 minutes ago, MJO812 said:

Direct Weather's preliminary winter outlook ( yes i know its way too early)

 

 

This is literally the same outlook everyone posts on youtube every single year. 

Not to mention - I'm trying to figure out why the northern plains are "Polar Vortex", the Rockies are snowy, the Midwest is "Arctic Blasts", the southern plains into the southeast is the ever-present "Battle Zone" --- but the mild corner is specifically most of Kansas and Nebraska, a fourth of Iowa, and half of Missouri. What pattern would produce that? I'm not sure. Perhaps somewhere had to be mild. 

[annunciated]

31 minutes ago, Ephesians2 said:

This is literally the same outlook everyone posts on youtube every single year. 

Not to mention - I'm trying to figure out why the northern plains are "Polar Vortex", the Rockies are snowy, the Midwest is "Arctic Blasts", the southern plains into the southeast is the ever-present "Battle Zone" --- but the mild corner is specifically most of Kansas and Nebraska, a fourth of Iowa, and half of Missouri. What pattern would produce that? I'm not sure. Perhaps somewhere had to be mild. 

His latest video is... interesting; calls for Coastal California and Oregon to get higher than avg. snow totals but not much of the Southern Rockies (@ "slightly above avg.") whom have a naturally greater shot of getting into those colder temps. I can somewhat agree with the rest, but it's easy to say that we only have broader hints of the setup ahead of us rather than patterns we can forecast weeks or a month/two in advance...not 4-6 months.