2026-2027 Strong/Super El Nino

[michsnowfreak]

23 minutes ago, MarcmmKU said:

For the interior northeast strong nino is almost always bad news. Coast can get a good fraction of their seasonal totals from 1 KU type storm, which are more likely to occur in traditional niños.

Same here in the Great Lakes- strong ninos usually are bad news. But its all relative. Winters in the Lakes and interior northeast are much harsher than the coast. So winter is more often characterized as a whole versus the coast where one huge storm (or lackthereof) often makes or breaks the winter. So basically, I already know im going to have winter, its just highly likely I'll get less of it than usual. Whereas those along coast from NYC south to the midatlantic wont be surprised in April 2027 if they've just seen a 5" winter with no storms or a 35" winter thanks to a massive storm.  

[MarcmmKU]

2 minutes ago, michsnowfreak said:

Same here in the Great Lakes- strong ninos usually are bad news. But its all relative. Winters in the Lakes and interior northeast are much harsher than the coast. So winter is more often characterized as a whole versus the coast where one huge storm (or lackthereof) often makes or breaks the winter. So basically, I already know im going to have winter, its just highly likely I'll get less of it than usual. Whereas those along coast from NYC south to the midatlantic wont be surprised in April 2027 if they've just seen a 5" winter with no storms or a 35" winter thanks to a massive storm.  

Totally agree. I'm an avid skier and strong ninos make my gut sink. I am praying we don't see a repeat of 2015-2016 in Vermont. Would be a disaster.

[MarcmmKU]

Food for thought is that this nino isn't really coupling well to real time observations in South America. A typical nino response down there is for lots and lots of precip in the central andes in Chile. So far bone dry and anomalously warm for may there, especially in a burgeoning strong nino.

[snowman19]

[snowman19]

“Southern Oscillation Index is the most negative it has been with the current #ElNiño event. The subsurface warmth will continue to surface taking the SOI even more negative in time. This is the ocean/atmospheric coupling that is necessary. This is why it was important to recognize that El Niño impacts (not equal or the same everywhere) were going to occur much sooner than the "fall/winter narrative"

[bluewave]

11 hours ago, mitchnick said:

Looks like the Euro failed on this warm forecast. 

Most of the guidance missed the record 100° heat last week from the long range guidance earlier in the month. Models don’t do very well with extremes beyond the week one and week two forecast periods.

My guess is that the guidance beyond 15 days just reverts to whatever ENSO climo applies to the situation. In this case it was the usually cooler May climo it was forecasting to continue.

So it missed the strong MJO 4-6 pulse which is very warm in the East. This was also why the Euro and other seasonal models missed the warmth in the East for the 2023-2024 super El Niño. They had the stock El Niño composite with a deep trough in the East.

Instead we got the record MJO 4-6 pulse with the more Niña-like January 2024 even with the recent +2.1 ONI in Nino 3.4. So the long range model forecasts were reverting to the typical El Niño 500mb composite. 

Something similar happened in December 2015 with the long range model forecasts missing the record warmth in the East due to the record MJO 5. 

So long range models like to forecast just for whatever the ENSO is and they can’t resolve the MJO activity in the IO to WPAC. The record warm pool there has been resulting in more frequent and stronger MJO 4-7 activity than the old days when the SSTs were significantly cooler there.