2026-2027 Record-breaking El Nino

[bluewave]

6 hours ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

2015 and especially 2023 had the warmth enhance by the MC convection and 1997 had one clean convective node the east. I don't feel like you are being entirely consistent in that you obsessed over the MC activity in previous seasons, but now you ignore that warm pool since it's in the central Pacific. 

January 1998 had dual forcing with one cell in Nino 3.4 and another near 1+2. The dominant forcing wound up shifting more eastward back to 1+2 in February. Both months were equally as warm. So we are just going to have to wait and see how the finer details within this much stronger historic event work out. 
 

 

 

[mitchnick]

6 hours ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

2015 and especially 2023 had the warmth enhance by the MC convection and 1997 had one clean convective node the east. I don't feel like you are being entirely consistent in that you obsessed over the MC activity in previous seasons, but now you ignore that warm pool since it's in the central Pacific. 

Fwiw, Euro seasonal rainfall from both Copernicus and the Euro site have equatorial precip maxes in Enso 3/3.4 and not in Enso 1.2 DJF.

https://charts.ecmwf.int/products/seasonal_system5_standard_rain?area=GLOB&base_time=202610010000&stats=tsum&valid_time=202611010000

https://climate.copernicus.eu/charts/packages/c3s_seasonal/products/c3s_seasonal_spatial_mm_rain_1m?area=area08&base_time=202610010000&type=tsum&valid_time=202611010000

[George001]

On 10/16/2026 at 6:13 PM, bluewave said:

My early winter guess is that the temperatures will be significantly warmer than any of the current seasonal models are forecasting. The temperatures for the first half of fall have been warmer than any other super El Niño year on record. Plus this is the strongest El Niño by a significant margin. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

I agree that the models are probably too cool. In terms of winter prospects, what are your early thoughts? I agree with you that it will be warm, but some of the guidance is indicating that the AN precip anomalies will get pretty far north. So I am thinking it will be more of an interior winter.

[snowman19]

46 minutes ago, bluewave said:

January 1998 had dual forcing with one cell in Nino 3.4 and another near 1+2. The dominant forcing wound up shifting more eastward back to 1+2 in February. Both months were equally as warm. So we are just going to have to wait and see how the finer details within this much stronger historic event work out. 
 

 

 

It would not surprise me at all to see forcing in 1+2 this winter. The SSTs are going to be more than warm enough to support convection….way warmer than 1997-98 actually. This thing is east-based as they come

[LakePaste25]

I’m with snowman on the MC convection idea. It’s been at near 0 since the summer, not sure why we would expect it to fire up again this winter. Will it be absolute 0? probably not due to the MJO, but it’ll be heavily suppressed just like phase 8 is during La Niña. 

[Keith Central PA]

1 hour ago, mitchnick said:

Webb uses a 24 hr period (forecast Days 14-15 no less) from 10/31-11/1 to establish a forecast for November and December? The pressure to always post something first on the internet must be brutal.

Many people here are throwing around December 2015..talk about extreme.+5 December is warm enough, which I could see, but +12?. It would have to be very dry with many days in the 60's, but with this  el nino who knows?.I think we'll get a good idea how warm in mid ,late November.

[Terpeast]

7 minutes ago, Keith Central PA said:

Many people here are throwing around December 2015..talk about extreme.+5 December is warm enough, which I could see, but +12?. It would have to be very dry with many days in the 60's, but with this  el nino who knows?.I think we'll get a good idea how warm in mid ,late November.

While I think Webb was cherry picking those 2 dates, I’m in the camp where we will see at least one +10 month for a good swath of this country/continent east of the rockies. For selfish reasons of course, I’m rooting for that month to be December, because that makes it more likely we will see a more temperate month relative to climo in either Jan or Feb, or perhaps both. 

[bluewave]

1 hour ago, snowman19 said:

It would not surprise me at all to see forcing in 1+2 this winter. The SSTs are going to be more than warm enough to support convection….way warmer than 1997-98 actually. This thing is east-based as they come

The forcing has had more of an eastward lean than 1997 did so far. Notice especially how much stronger the forcing was during the Southern Hemisphere winter closer to the West Coast of South America. Also the extension of the forcing into the SW CONUS has been stronger early on than 1997.