2026-2027 Strong/Super El Nino

[michsnowfreak]

1 hour ago, roardog said:

So we have a model temperature forecast for 7 months into the future and it's against an 1880-1920 mean. lol

They dig and dig to find this stuff lol.

[michsnowfreak]

1 hour ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

This is in no way 2009-2010...not remotely relevant. You have brought that up a couple of times...it's moot. It was much weaker and the warmth was relegated to the western flank...not to mention we had just passed solar min with a neg QBO.

I would never count on a "good" winter in a strong nino. But I also wouldn't just assume that the stronger the nino the worse the winter will be. There are other pieces of the puzzle besides enso.

[A-L-E-K]

2 hours ago, forkyfork said:

can we have a separate thread for winter talk?

still coping with the winter cancel

[forkyfork]

Just now, A-L-E-K said:

still coping with the winter cancel

my area is currently in its hottest developing nino may heat wave on record

[Maestrobjwa]

2 hours ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

This is in no way 2009-2010...not remotely relevant. You have brought that up a couple of times...it's moot. It was much weaker and the warmth was relegated to the western flank...not to mention we had just passed solar min with a neg QBO.

Whereas the warmth this time around looks to setup where? (Or is it too early to tell) Trying to know if I shoild expect a 72-73/97-98 torch or not, lol

[GaWx]

6 minutes ago, Maestrobjwa said:

Whereas the warmth this time around looks to setup where? (Or is it too early to tell) Trying to know if I shoild expect a 72-73/97-98 torch or not, lol

 I’ve got the solution. If you want to minimize the chance for a warmer than normal winter where you live, just move down south and your chances will fall substantially!

[LakePaste25]

41 minutes ago, A-L-E-K said:

still coping with the winter cancel

The key is to just roll with it. Fire up the BBQ on Christmas and make something good

[forkyfork]

49 minutes ago, A-L-E-K said:

still coping with the winter cancel

also hurricane season cancel

[LakePaste25]

Just recorded our 2nd earliest 90+ degree day on record at ERI. The earliest was 5/16/1991. Definitely not typical for a pre Nino May.

[TheClimateChanger]

28 minutes ago, LakePaste25 said:

Just recorded our 2nd earliest 90+ degree day on record at ERI. The earliest was 5/16/1991. Definitely not typical for a pre Nino May.

Incredible. Already as many or more 90+ days than 54 years - and it's only May 18. That's more than 1 in 3 years, and probably more like 1 in 2 or at least 2 in 5 if you back out recent decades where fewer than 2 90+ days has been exceptionally uncommon.

[PhiEaglesfan712]

39 minutes ago, LakePaste25 said:

Just recorded our 2nd earliest 90+ degree day on record at ERI. The earliest was 5/16/1991. Definitely not typical for a pre Nino May.

Oddly enough, 1991 was a pre-nino May (although there would be the major volcano the following month that made sure the nino event behaved weirdly).

[snowman19]

[michsnowfreak]

2 hours ago, A-L-E-K said:

still coping with the winter cancel

Actually I see it as the opposite. There were a few very disappointed with how last winter turned out cold/wintry. Didn't sit well with them at all so with a big nino coming and better odds for a milder winter, the excitement cant be contained.

We will still get winter regardless, but if you want the mild strong el nino pattern, you can say goodbye to any winter sun. No winters are grayer in the already gray Great Lakes than mild nino ones.

[michsnowfreak]

1 hour ago, LakePaste25 said:

Just recorded our 2nd earliest 90+ degree day on record at ERI. The earliest was 5/16/1991. Definitely not typical for a pre Nino May.

A few warm days in any given May are normal. The monthly departure is still colder than avg. Looks like all pre-stromg nino Mays had a max in the mid to upper 80s here. 

[snowman19]

 

From a South American Met:

 

 

 

 

^ Translation:

“This is the magnitude of how deep—and therefore how long-lasting—the warming of the ocean floor near our coasts is. We're talking about 100 meters or more in its most significant part and nearly 500 in its verifiable depth. All that warm anomaly is advancing toward the South American coastal edge.
There's little the APS can do, as noted (APS=South Pacific Anticyclone)
We haven't seen anything like this since 1997. This is one of the reasons, perhaps the most relevant one, why there's so much information about a major #ElNiño event on the horizon.”

 

 

[Stormchaserchuck1]

^You were right about it shifting east, like other Strong Nino's. I have seen cold pools get stuck in the middle-west for the last few years, and kind of thought this year could follow the same trend with Nino 4 getting warm so early. 

[snowman19]

^You were right about it shifting east, like other Strong Nino's. I have seen cold pools get stuck in the middle-west for the last few years, and kind of thought this year could follow the same trend with Nino 4 getting warm so early. 

Yea, this one is developing as a “Costero”/coastal (east-based, EP) El Niño event. According to the South American Mets, we haven’t seen anything like this since 1997

[40/70 Benchmark]

3 hours ago, Maestrobjwa said:

Whereas the warmth this time around looks to setup where? (Or is it too early to tell) Trying to know if I shoild expect a 72-73/97-98 torch or not, lol

Everywhere.

[LakePaste25]

1 hour ago, michsnowfreak said:

A few warm days in any given May are normal. The monthly departure is still colder than avg. Looks like all pre-stromg nino Mays had a max in the mid to upper 80s here. 

I wouldn’t say that coming 1 degree short of the all-time record high for May is “normal”

[40/70 Benchmark]

4 hours ago, michsnowfreak said:

I would never count on a "good" winter in a strong nino. But I also wouldn't just assume that the stronger the nino the worse the winter will be. There are other pieces of the puzzle besides enso.

That isn't what I said. However, I will discount a winter that is anything like 2009-2010 this coming season.  Does that mean very little snowfall? No, not necessarily, but it will be warm.

[40/70 Benchmark]

3 hours ago, forkyfork said:

also hurricane season cancel

TBH, I think I would bet on this season being more impactful for the US than last season.

[michsnowfreak]

1 hour ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

That isn't what I said. However, I will discount a winter that is anything like 2009-2010 this coming season.  Does that mean very little snowfall? No, not necessarily, but it will be warm.

I wasn't implying you said that. I was just making a very generalized statement (using the assumption that stronger = worse). 

We all know that 2009-10 was a weird ass winter. Bare ground in Maine with feet of snow in the Mid-Atlantic.

I already have a feeling for the type of winter it'll be here, but ill wait til fall to see if it changes. Im thinking one real shitty warm month. Multiple stretches of winter weather the rest of the time but no sustaining like the past 2. Another wildcard is the traditional el nino = dry can actually really be a fail during strong ninos with some surprisingly wet results (chuck pointed this out).

[MJO812]

12 hours ago, forkyfork said:

my area is currently in its hottest developing nino may heat wave on record

That doesnt have anything to do with what will occur 7 months from now.  These long range forecasts have to end. They are rarely right.  Its fun to do one though. 

[MJO812]

Of course next winter will be warmer. This winter was one of the coldest winters in a long time in the east.  

[40/70 Benchmark]

10 hours ago, michsnowfreak said:

I wasn't implying you said that. I was just making a very generalized statement (using the assumption that stronger = worse). 

We all know that 2009-10 was a weird ass winter. Bare ground in Maine with feet of snow in the Mid-Atlantic.

I already have a feeling for the type of winter it'll be here, but ill wait til fall to see if it changes. Im thinking one real shitty warm month. Multiple stretches of winter weather the rest of the time but no sustaining like the past 2. Another wildcard is the traditional el nino = dry can actually really be a fail during strong ninos with some surprisingly wet results (chuck pointed this out).

I def. wouldn't be as worried about it where you are....more wiggle room.

[40/70 Benchmark]

3 hours ago, MJO812 said:

That doesnt have anything to do with what will occur 7 months from now.  These long range forecasts have to end. They are rarely right.  Its fun to do one though. 

I think keying in on major signals when developing an analog composite does have some value.

[bluewave]

On 5/16/2026 at 7:17 PM, roardog said:

Like Bluewave was saying, some aspects of the coming pattern are Nino like but not all. The SE ridge and coming heat over the eastern US is not. The warmth in Nino 4 is a problem and I’m guessing will cause non Nino forcing at times and MJO rotations at times in Non Nino phases. I said a couple of months ago that if we see a cool and wet summer and fall in the Great Lakes and eastern US then I’ll feel more confident of a typical strong/super Nino response come winter. Otherwise I’d be concerned about another “La Nino” which is probably actually worse for eastern winter lovers.

The last two El Niños going over +2.0 had these La Niña-like tendencies overlapping with the El Niño. The SSTs have been so warm through the Indian Ocean into the Western Pacific, that the MJO 4-7 forcing has been very active. In the old days when cooler SSTs prevailed there, the MJO was quiet in these more Niña-like phases during such strong El Niños.

Obviously, December 2015 was the most extreme example of this. That historic month actually had the strong MJO 5 combine with the El Niño to produce the record +13 month in the Northeast. None of the long range models had this in the forecast for December.

The unusual Niña-like MJO 4-6 in January 2024 with a Southeast ridge wasn’t anticipated by the seasonal models.  They had the classic El Niño stock composite and a deep trough in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast.

The record heat this week with the forcing coming out of the 4 region wasn’t well forecast back at the start of May. 
 

https://phys.org/news/2021-04-distinctive-mjo-super-el-nino.html

A research group, led by Dr. Wenjun Zhang from the Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology analyzed MJO activity of the super El Niño event during the Northern Hemisphere winter of 2015/16. Observations show that the western Pacific MJO activity was strongly suppressed during the peak phase of the 1982/83 and 1997/98 super El Niño events. However, during the crest of the 2015/16 super El Niño event, western Pacific MJO-related convection was enhanced.

"It is apparent that the enhanced western Pacific MJO is mainly related to its sea surface temperature (SST) anomaly distribution and the associated background thermodynamic conditions." said Dr. Zhang. His team's complete research and data are published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences.

When compared to the previous super El Niño events, the warm SST anomaly, or change from average, of the 2015/16 El Niño was located more westward than during the other two extreme seasons. Additionally, no significant cold SST anomaly was detected in the western Pacific. Accordingly, the moisture and air temperature tended to increase in the central-western Pacific during the winter of 2015/16 unlike the previous super El Niño events.

This research highlights that climatologists should consider the SST anomaly distribution of super El Niño events for future MJO activity studies.

https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/38/23/JCLI-D-24-0689.1.xml

Easterly anomalies occurred in the equatorial central Pacific “unexpectedly” in January 2024, when an El Niño was at its peak. The cause of this “abnormal” zonal wind condition is investigated through the decomposition of multi-time-scale signals. The result indicates that the easterly anomalies arose from the combined effects of the Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO), the interdecadal variability–global warming trend (IDGT) signal and the “pure” interannual signal. It is found that a slowly moving active-phase MJO appeared over the Indo-Pacific warm pool during January 2024, and, as a result, there is a net positive precipitation anomaly over the warm pool, leading to easterly anomalies in the western-central equatorial Pacific. The IDGT signal since 1979 exhibits an enhanced zonal sea surface temperature (SST) gradient across the equatorial Pacific, which strengthens the trade wind at the equator. The summation of the MJO and IDGT signals surpassed the El Niño–induced westerly anomaly, leading to an unexpected equatorial easterly anomaly in January 2024. An assessment of observational data since 1979 shows a 10% chance of the occurrence of such an “uncoupling” during El Niño, during which the MJO and/or IDGT modes did play a role.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31776488/

Here we show that rapid warming over the tropical oceans during 1981-2018 has warped the MJO life cycle, with its residence time decreasing over the Indian Ocean by 3-4 days, and increasing over the Indo-Pacific Maritime Continent by 5-6 days. We find that these changes in the MJO life cycle are associated with a twofold expansion of the Indo-Pacific warm pool, the largest expanse of the warmest ocean temperatures on Earth. The warm pool has been expanding on average by 2.3 × 10⁵ km² (the size of Washington State) per year during 1900-2018 and at an accelerated average rate of 4 × 10⁵ km² (the size of California) per year during 1981-2018. The changes in the Indo-Pacific warm pool and the MJO are related to increased rainfall over southeast Asia, northern Australia, Southwest Africa and the Amazon, and drying over the west coast of the United States and Ecuador.

 

 

 

[snowman19]

IMO the Niña-like MJO (IO) forcing comes to an end with this El Niño once the +IOD gets established. The standing wave Nino/+IOD forcing combo is going to cause the eastern IO SSTs to upwell and cool off, causing subsidence in that region

 

[A-L-E-K]

17 hours ago, forkyfork said:

also hurricane season cancel

bummer tbh

[GaWx]

Latest CFS RONI peaks at +2.65 to +2.70 in OND, which would be a record high beating 1982:

Latest CFS ONI is +3.25-30 in OND, meaning keeping the differential near 0.6: