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

 

[bluewave]

October is continuing the seasonal model error for at least one month out. The seasonal models from early September had the typical -EPO October El Nino ridge near Alaska and NW Canada.This has been the seasonal model forecast error since May.

The month to date has the 500mb ridge shifted further south over the CONUS with lower heights near Alaska. The next week will add to this pattern lowering heights more near Alaska and maintaining the CONUS ridge.

This will be the furthest south ridge position for an El Nino October even when just using the 1972,1982,1997,2015, and 2023 super composite. 

Month to date

Forecast through October 19th

 

October forecast issued in early September 

 

October El Niño composite 

 

 

 

[so_whats_happening]

10 hours ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

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

Again we are roughly about a month and a half earlier than in 1997/98

[bluewave]

Even though the CFS is currently too cool in Nino 1+2, the updated seasonal model update still has an east based El Niño lingering into next June with strong WWBs continuing. 

 

 

[GaWx]

3 hours ago, EasternLI said:

 

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

 

Thanks so much! We can see again!  Per the graph you provided it is going about as expected at 30 mb.
 

The table at the following link has the 30 mb QBO through when it stopped updating:

https://psl.noaa.gov/data/correlation/qbo.data
 

 This data had left off with Feb ‘26, which was then the 10th month in a row of a 30 mb -QBO (E QBO) and was starting to rise:

2025   12.11   10.55   11.82    6.94   -4.59  -13.72  -19.99  -22.28  -24.26  -24.65  -25.35  -26.92
2026  -25.51  -23.13
 

 Looking at the widely followed 30 mb level on your graph, the QBO had one more strong negative (strong E) in March followed by a sharp rise from April through Sep (not at all unexpected) to typical solid positive (W) territory. The graph, including when looking at past patterns and projecting ahead, confirms the earlier confident predictions of a positive (W) QBO at 30 mb this upcoming entire winter.

[40/70 Benchmark]

13 hours ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

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

I'm not talking about STRENGTH...I mean strongest point of convective forcing.

[40/70 Benchmark]

13 hours ago, LakePaste25 said:

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. 

Right....not as far west as 2023, which as into the MC and very hostile. Expect it to the south of Hawaii...this is more favorable. This is what I was just trying to explain to Chuck. 

[40/70 Benchmark]

11 hours ago, FPizz said:

He is post restricted i believe so has to do that 

Adam used to edit previous posts to add in another comment lol...I like that better.

[40/70 Benchmark]

Ignore this at your own forecast peril if you plan on publishing work touting a non-winter along the east coast.

The final two analogs have very similar placement of the central-based connective node this season, which is in the vicinity of 170 degrees longitude in the central Pacific, however, they were appreciably weaker El Niño events that were largely bereft of any eastern competition.

 

 

The forcing was in the central Pacific simply because they were central-Pacific El Niño events, which is why there was no competing forces stretching the convection, as is the case this year.

 

 Thus it is for this reason in addition to the warming climate that the second half of the impending winter is highly unlikely to be as consistently cold as the coming season, despite each being viable polar analogs. It is for these reasons that this season the warmer periods will be of longer duration and of greater magnitude than the colder periods relative the 1957-1958 and 1965-1966 analogs. However, each of these seasons are relatively strong polar analogs and the center of the convective forcing was nearly identical to where the central node is expected to reside during the coming season, at around 170 degrees longitude.

[mitchnick]

4 hours ago, bluewave said:

Even though the CFS is currently too cool in Nino 1+2, the updated seasonal model update still has an east based El Niño lingering into next June with strong WWBs continuing. 

 

 

Yes, but if you use the slide function to put the forecast in motion, the cooler waters are making a bee-line east. Should they continue after the end of the forecast period (7/27), you'd probably at least end up with a La Nada next winter, if not a weak Niña imho. I guess the question then is why wouldn't the cooler waters continue east? 

https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/models/?model=cfs-mon&region=global&pkg=ssta&runtime=2026101100&fh=1

[EasternLI]

16 hours ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

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

 

And growing..