2026-2027 Record-breaking El Nino

[Stormchaserchuck1]

4 hours ago, Winter Wizard said:

An interesting thing about the GLAAM is that when it's plotted on a latitudinal basis, it's actually shown to be strongly in the negative direction around the mid-latitudes. It almost looks like a glitch but it has been moderately to strongly negative at various other points since July. Perhaps some interference somewhere?

Thanks for posting that.. basically net neutral from 30-90N, same story. 

[Stormchaserchuck1]

4 hours ago, LakePaste25 said:

That's a 2std -PDO pattern.. obviously continues to hold the crown as correlation leader in the N. Pacific. 

[Stormchaserchuck1]

On 9/16/2026 at 12:00 AM, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

Should be interesting to see if we follow the last 3 El Nino's post-2016 PDO-change in October with a SE ridge and an area of real cold. 

CPC going with it

[EasternLI]

This GOA low starting to show up as we roll into October. It's kind of something similar to what one would expect to see showing up during el nino in October. Ensembles advertising this look to start out the month. One could say The Aleutian low is simply biased east from the following composite. Thinking that might very well be a plausible idea given the east based nature of this particular event. In addition to the residual state of the north Pacific but let's see how that entire month verifies and evolves. If we envision a roadmap purely from the nino composite, we should see that low eventually retrograde and the ridge just west of the dateline get squashed. 

 

[Stormchaserchuck1]

Historically warm Nino 1+2 in Oct doesn't look like that. Winter, yes, not october based on the last 73 years. 

I'd say the H5 model you are posting is more opposite than similar in the n. pacific

[EasternLI]

Yeah IDK just thinking out loud one way I could see it go without too much thought. Actually, the -PDO October might be the best fit for that north Pacific and NA look advertised if we reverse this color scheme accordingly. I'm curious what happens that month as we're really getting into autumn at that point. Not much confidence one way or another.

[GaWx]

6 hours ago, Winter Wizard said:

An interesting thing about the GLAAM is that when it's plotted on a latitudinal basis, it's actually shown to be strongly in the negative direction around the mid-latitudes. It almost looks like a glitch but it has been moderately to strongly negative at various other points since July. Perhaps some interference somewhere?

Indeed, the weighted avg of your graph, which looks like it is only ~+1.25 to 1.5, doesn’t at all jibe with the image below, which shows it ~+3.3:

[so_whats_happening]

3 hours ago, GaWx said:

Indeed, the weighted avg of your graph, which looks like it is only ~+1.25 to 1.5, doesn’t at all jibe with the image below, which shows it ~+3.3:

It does start to become noticeable when you take a look at things in this perspective. Southern hemisphere and tropics still humming along as they have been.

[GaWx]

1 hour ago, so_whats_happening said:

It does start to become noticeable when you take a look at things in this perspective. Southern hemisphere and tropics still humming along as they have been.

The mean global AAM based on this is not much above 0…+0.5 at most, not at all jibing with the Sep 17th +3.3. I don’t get it.

[Stormchaserchuck1]

3 days of <-30 SOI in a row

18 Sep 2026	1010.91	1014.40	-34.52	-18.69	-21.31
17 Sep 2026	1011.10	1014.00	-31.02	-18.48	-21.12
16 Sep 2026	1011.63	1015.00	-33.81	-18.19	-20.84

 

September is going to finish pretty strongly -SOI, making May-Sept one of the more -SOI periods on record. Here is what follows the following year (+16 months):

[map default is +correlation, so for -SOI it's opposite]

[bluewave]

19 hours ago, soadforecasterx said:

Seems like we are still seeing some good heating going on to push this el nino stronger. 

The continuing record WWBs are making this the strongest east based event for so early in the season. 
 

 

[GaWx]

 The AAM is now up to +3.7 and has a good chance to be off the chart tomorrow!

[bluewave]

23 hours ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

This makes sense, though, if you consider that the N hemisphere was not at all redolent of El Nino throughout the summer, likely due in large part to the antecedent state of the extra tropical Pacific. If that were to begin to change, this is what it would look like. I think October will be the month that will really be telling, which I know you have posted data to the same effect.

Overlapping forecast signal showing up near the start of October. A more traditional Nino ridge south of Hudson Bay developing. With the lingering mid-latitude ridge underneath. 
 

 

 

[40/70 Benchmark]

2 minutes ago, bluewave said:

Overlapping signal showing up near the start of October. A more traditional Nino ridge south of Hudson Bay developing. With the lingering mid-latitude ridge underneath. 
 

 

 

Nothing surprising there...gotta see what the monthly mean looks like. CFS should have a good idea in another 10 days or so.

[40/70 Benchmark]

5 hours ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

3 days of <-30 SOI in a row

18 Sep 2026	1010.91	1014.40	-34.52	-18.69	-21.31
17 Sep 2026	1011.10	1014.00	-31.02	-18.48	-21.12
16 Sep 2026	1011.63	1015.00	-33.81	-18.19	-20.84

 

September is going to finish pretty strongly -SOI, making May-Sept one of the more -SOI periods on record. Here is what follows the following year (+16 months):

[map default is +correlation, so for -SOI it's opposite]

Looks like basin-wide La Nina next year...I'd take my chances with that in combination with an easterly QBO and a move away from geomag peak.

[bluewave]

8 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Nothing surprising there...gotta see what the monthly mean looks like. CFS should have a good idea in another 10 days or so.

I like the Euro monthly forecasts issued on the 5th which have been doing a pretty good job compared to some of the other guidance. 

 

[GaWx]

 The SOI has been negative for 37 days in a row.

[GaWx]

 This CFSv2 seasonal prediction site, which includes the ENSO SSTa forecasts, hasn’t updated in over 4 days:

https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/CFSv2/CFSv2seasonal.shtml

This is the most recent 10 day mean forecast for RONI:

this has a peak at +2.9, compares to peaks of ~+3.5 on some runs from late July, and was suggesting further drops in the peak being likely on later 10 day means due to most of the blue lines being lower than the red ones:

[roardog]

7 hours ago, bluewave said:

Overlapping forecast signal showing up near the start of October. A more traditional Nino ridge south of Hudson Bay developing. With the lingering mid-latitude ridge underneath. 
 

 

 

I thought the Nino ridge south of Hudson Bay was not usually a Nino feature in October though. 

[bluewave]

30 minutes ago, roardog said:

I thought the Nino ridge south of Hudson Bay was not usually a Nino feature in October though. 

Depends on the year since the ridge location and intensity has been quite variable during previous super El Niño Octobers. This year is doing its own thing so far with the ridges stronger and further south than usual. We’ll have to see what the pattern looks like in early October since all we have now is a snapshot for the start of the month.

[GaWx]

3 hours ago, GaWx said:

 This CFSv2 seasonal prediction site, which includes the ENSO SSTa forecasts, hasn’t updated in over 4 days:

https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/CFSv2/CFSv2seasonal.shtml

This is the most recent 10 day mean forecast for RONI:

this has a peak at +2.9, compares to peaks of ~+3.5 on some runs from late July, and was suggesting further drops in the peak being likely on later 10 day means due to most of the blue lines being lower than the red ones:

Follow-up: I emailed the 2 contacts who are listed at this CFSv2 site. Just minutes later, the site was updated!

 Here’s the brand new latest 10 day mean RONI forecast: as expected, the progged peak dropped even further to +2.8. Compare that to the +3.5 runs of late July. It appears it could even drop to +2.75 later this month based on the red vs blue lines:

[mitchnick]

8 hours ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Nothing surprising there...gotta see what the monthly mean looks like. CFS should have a good idea in another 10 days or so.

Cfs2 has a seperate link for the coming month.

https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/CFSv2/monthly/

[EasternLI]

Different visual on the AAM, but to the point of the latitude AAM chart posted. It's telling the same story. Namely that the tropics and SH are still in the spotlight WRT +AAM. Meanwhile the NH, is still on the sidelines for the most part. Very clearly broken down on the bottom half of the chart via regional contributions. Which remain around neutral for the NH components. 

 

One other thing to note is regarding the +AAM spike upcoming. That looks to be a byproduct of a recent rather large +MT event in the SH (Andes) mostly. Which is the same thing that happened with the previous ones we've seen to date thus far. So that's not too surprising given the state of the SH vs NH as discussed above and in this thread. These are all obs, not a forecast. We'll see how it goes from here but the NH apparently still needs to be brought into this game as of right now.

[Stormchaserchuck1]

^Much higher correlation in the Southern Hemisphere Winter, wonder if it means Northern Hemisphere Winter will respond more

[40/70 Benchmark]

26 minutes ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

^Much higher correlation in the Southern Hemisphere Winter, wonder if it means Northern Hemisphere Winter will respond more

It should.....the main argument against a better expression of El Ninoi is the CC enhanced MC regime destructively interfering, but I don't think anyone would argue that the S Hem isn't experiencing CC, as well.

[40/70 Benchmark]

On 9/17/2026 at 4:36 PM, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

Thanks for posting that.. basically net neutral from 30-90N, same story. 

I would argue that it's a bit of a net positive, but nor argument that it's not anywhere approaching comensurate with the magnitude of El Niño.