2026-2027 Record-breaking El Nino

[michsnowfreak]

23 hours ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Heh...DT jumping on the "Second half Modoki" train....that is an exaggeration, but as I have ben saying, it will erode from the east, which will allow for more conducive mid seasonal flip.

Ill worry about a mid season flip after Christmas. The initial thing of interest will be during the assumably more hostile beginning part of winter, how much snow can we squeak out in the more northern locations. Will also be interesting to see if the Lakes can crank some goods in November. Its been over a decade since we have NOT seen a good November cold shot with snow. And in fact, several Novembers have been snowier than December in that time.

[cmillzz]

8 hours ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

@LibertyBellhas the record for most quotes in one response.

looks manic tbh

[LakePaste25]

Rainfall in the SW from tropical remnants while another system goes up the East coast. Certainly El Niño like regardless of whether the H5 out in the N pacific matches, and the C3S and Euro seasonal hinted at this precip. pattern for the fall. 

 

[Stormchaserchuck1]

So high the color scale goes to white! +12C

[Stormchaserchuck1]

Strongest El Nino on record normalizes the normal La Nina in the equilateral Pacific

[LakePaste25]

18 minutes ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

So high the color scale goes to white! +12C

The thermocline could potentially reverse which is something I’ve never seen before. 

[MJO812]

DT 

https://youtu.be/ZOpnMAt0OhQ?is=39sId3hYh73xhO1Q

[GaWx]

1 hour ago, cmillzz said:

looks manic tbh

I look at @LibertyBellas being the Superman of efficiency, which I can appreciate. However, if someone who wrote one of the 100 posts whom LB replied to wants to reply back, wouldn’t that be a mess? I mean one of my posts (about baseball 8th-9th inning comeback chances) was in another massive reply. I was going to reply back, but never did because of the mess. I guess I could have copied and pasted just the reply to me, but I was too lazy. 

I don’t think a single person in that position has ever replied back! So, I’ve figured out why LB does this. To minimize replies back. And that’s part of being a Superman of efficiency. Right LB? 

[GaWx]

47 minutes ago, MJO812 said:

DT 

https://youtu.be/ZOpnMAt0OhQ?is=39sId3hYh73xhO1Q

Anthony, Thanks for posting the DT update.
 
1. We don’t even know what the QBO is doing anymore thanks to you know who. But, based on where it was early in 2026, there was very little chance that it would NOT be W based this winter. *Edited due to typo*

2. I think that the usefulness of Judah’s SAI is questionable.

[Stormchaserchuck1]

Modoki is ridiculous. This is the strongest east-based event on record. The subsurface which moves west to east is further west than all Super Nino analogs, which means the east-based nature of the event has staying power. The ECMWF still has Nino 1+2 at +3c next May

[LakePaste25]

Yeah I’d exercise caution with the “west based forcing because previous Ninos had forcing more west based than forecast” idea. It’s a valid point, but keep in mind this is east-based beyond historical precedent. 

[40/70 Benchmark]

28 minutes ago, LakePaste25 said:

Yeah I’d exercise caution with the “west based forcing because previous Ninos had forcing more west based than forecast” idea. It’s a valid point, but keep in mind this is east-based beyond historical precedent. 

My postulation is basin-wide/hybrid forcing for that reason...like 1957 and 1965, but warmer.

[40/70 Benchmark]

I would also be careful with the very linear line of thought that there can't be any pattern deviation because it's so east based.

[LakePaste25]

12 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

I would also be careful with the very linear line of thought that there can't be any pattern deviation because it's so east based.

There could be brief deviations westward, just not expecting a nearly month long deviation like we saw in 2023-2024. The fact that we shut down forcing west of the dateline already and we have a hyperactive EPac hurricane season is notable. 97-98 didn’t even do that this early. 

[Stormchaserchuck1]

38 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

My postulation is basin-wide/hybrid forcing for that reason...like 1957 and 1965, but warmer.

There would have to be rapid ENSO cooling for that to happen. 

[FPizz]

4 hours ago, cmillzz said:

looks manic tbh

He is post restricted i believe so has to do that 

[GaWx]

 Well, it’s that time yet again, time to see how far another very long 2026 -SOI streak will go. As of yesterday, it was up to a whopping 69 days! That 69 days already puts it in 4th place for the longest since 1992. Only 4 more days are needed for it to become the new 3rd longest.

 However, here are the last 3 days:

2026 281 1013.63 1014.25  -22.63
2026 282 1014.05 1012.90  -11.22
2026 283 1014.79 1012.05   -0.97
 

 Now you (just like I originally did) might wonder if this streak is going to end today. It sure looks like it on the surface.

 But I did some analyses and have determined that’s unlikely. Why? I see Darwin likely rising ~0.5-0.75 mb today and little change with Tahiti. If those predictions verify pretty well, today’s SOI will drop ~3-6. And then looking further ahead after several more days of Tahiti remaining ~same, it will start falling soon after without rising back up to yesterday’s 1014.79 area for at the very least 10 days while Darwin rises a fair amount more without falling back down to yesterday’s 1012.05 area for at least 10 days.

 That means that I see a high likelihood of this -SOI streak reaching at least 80 days. At that point, I’d then have a decent feel for the chance of reaching at least 90. To put this into perspective: we just had a 91 day streak May-Aug, the 2nd longest on record back to 1992. The longest is 100 days (set in Jan-Apr ‘98).

[EasternLI]

6 hours ago, GaWx said:

Anthony, Thanks for posting the DT update.
 
1. We don’t even know what the QBO is doing anymore thanks to you know who. But, based on where it was early in 2026, there was very little chance that it would NOT be W based this winter. *Edited due to typo*

2. I think that the usefulness of Judah’s SAI is questionable.

 

Fortunately there are still alternative ways to view how the QBO is doing. The FU Berlin site (which you and some others may remember) was one of the better datasets until those updates were discontinued. Thankfully the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology has taken that same dataset and decided to continue the updates to it from where they left off. The raw data is also available there in the same format the Berlin site used to use. Here's the link if anyone is interested:

 

https://www.atmohub.kit.edu/english/807.php