Winter 2026-2027. Historic Potential

[psuhoffman]

Just a reminder, because apparently some people need to know this....thermometers are not subjective.  

[bedrock_wx]

15 hours ago, ravensrule said:

Wow, what an incredible first post. Please make it your last. 

Couldn't help myself...

In all seriousness though the warm spot is probably some kind of model initialization error, since it has appeared consistently in several runs now in a row. Doesn't matter too much, though, since the CanSIPS is pretty notorious for its low skill levels anyway... Not only that, but it has been playing catch-up to the other seasonal models for quite a few months in a row, and can't even get Pacific SSTs correct at the initialization time. With the Euro coming out here in a few days, I don't think the CanSIPS is worth too much attention. Just my two cents.

[CAPE]

22 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

Just a reminder, because apparently some people need to know this....thermometers are not subjective.  

It's objectively anomalously hot today, regardless of the accuracy of the specific type of thermometer(sensor)one uses to measure the temperature. Sorry for the techy geek out.

[Eskimo Joe]

5 minutes ago, CAPE said:

It's objectively anomalously hot today, regardless of the accuracy of the specific type of thermometer(sensor)one uses to measure the temperature. Sorry for the techy geek out.

Heat index in the low 90s at some mesonet sites in early October. October is the new September it seems.

[mitchnick]

6 minutes ago, CAPE said:

It's objectively anomalously hot today, regardless of the accuracy of the specific type of thermometer(sensor)one uses to measure the temperature. Sorry for the techy geek out.

But cool air is on the way and not far away for that matter.

https://www.weather.gov/wrh/hazards?obs=true&wfo=ctp&hazard=true&hazard_type=all&hazard_opacity=80&tab=legend

[ravensrule]

2 hours ago, psuhoffman said:

Just a reminder, because apparently some people need to know this....thermometers are not subjective.  

My rectal thermometer sure is. 

[bncho]

the south wins once again lol

 

[ensonerd1233e343]

1 hour ago, bncho said:

the south wins once again lol

 

I guess bro

[bncho]

13 minutes ago, ensonerd1233e343 said:

I guess bro

thanks for the feedback ensonerd1233e343

[Terpeast]

1 hour ago, bncho said:

the south wins once again lol

 

October snows are a bad omen

[TSSN+]

10 hours ago, Terpeast said:

October snows are a bad omen

I mean I got 6” of snow in October before the 09-10 winter up in state college haha 

[WxUSAF]

23 minutes ago, TSSN+ said:

I mean I got 6” of snow in October before the 09-10 winter up in state college haha 

02-03 winter in state college was epic and made up (mostly) for the dismal first 3 winters I had there. We had snow for Halloween 2002 and winter kept going until Easter 2003.

[Terpeast]

Maybe the bad omen only applies to DMV, I have checked the data before. It didn’t look good. But there are always exceptions 

[Weather Will]

Let's see how the Northern Hemisphere snow/ice map looks by November....

[Eskimo Joe]

3 hours ago, Weather Will said:

Let's see how the Northern Hemisphere snow/ice map looks by November....

Looks like a rather ugly start to snow and ice cover season.

[Eskimo Joe]

8 hours ago, WxUSAF said:

02-03 winter in state college was epic and made up (mostly) for the dismal first 3 winters I had there. We had snow for Halloween 2002 and winter kept going until Easter 2003.

That winter was awesome in Philly. It just snowed and we saw a lot of well timed cold shots.

[CAPE]

21 hours ago, Terpeast said:

October snows are a bad omen

And how often does it actually snow in October(outside of a few flakes) east of the western highlands? This seems silly and irrelevant, regardless of how many times it is mentioned here.

[CAPE]

11 hours ago, TSSN+ said:

I mean I got 6” of snow in October before the 09-10 winter up in state college haha 

Cool.

[bedrock_wx]

3 hours ago, Eskimo Joe said:

Looks like a rather ugly start to snow and ice cover season.

Could be a lot worse. The current modeling suggests we should be able to put down some good snow into Siberia in the next week or two.

Plus, it's more about the advance rate of Siberian snowpack, rather than total volume. There have been a few studies on this done if I am recalling correctly.

[Eskimo Joe]

27 minutes ago, bedrock_wx said:

Could be a lot worse. The current modeling suggests we should be able to put down some good snow into Siberia in the next week or two.

Plus, it's more about the advance rate of Siberian snowpack, rather than total volume. There have been a few studies on this done if I am recalling correctly.

If you're referring to the theorem by Judah Cohen that postulates rapid snow cover advance can weaken the polar vortex, the jury seems to believe that's incorrect.

[CAPE]

46 minutes ago, bedrock_wx said:

Could be a lot worse. The current modeling suggests we should be able to put down some good snow into Siberia in the next week or two.

Plus, it's more about the advance rate of Siberian snowpack, rather than total volume. There have been a few studies on this done if I am recalling correctly.

Cohen's postulation that high rate of advance of Siberian snow cover during October leads to a -AO winter has been hit or miss at best, but almost always a miss during Strong El Ninos.

[Stormchaserchuck1]

14 hours ago, CAPE said:

And how often does it actually snow in October(outside of a few flakes) east of the western highlands? This seems silly and irrelevant, regardless of how many times it is mentioned here.

I don't see why having snow in October would be a bad thing. Would you rather it be 80 in October? People here run away with a small matching number of statistics. You see this especially with Super Nino analogs.

[Stormchaserchuck1]

Our most recent severe cold/snow Winters in October

If you take out 2014 because that Winter had a record breaking ridge over the West, the October composite is much colder. 

[Terpeast]

16 hours ago, CAPE said:

And how often does it actually snow in October(outside of a few flakes) east of the western highlands? This seems silly and irrelevant, regardless of how many times it is mentioned here.

Was gonna respond to this with a plot I did years ago showing how the 500mb pattern over the east often reverses from October to DJF (eg east ridge winter after troughing in oct), but the plotting tool I’m using seems to be broken and I don’t have the time to try another tool. I also hadn’t broken it down between la nina and el nino years when I did it back then. What I meant was not only october snow, but the bigger picture of the overall pattern. But without the plots, I can’t make that case now. Oh well. 

[Stormchaserchuck1]

NAO has a pretty good opposite correlation between October and the Winter. It's the only month of the year where that is true! Actually since "discovering that" in 2005, it's flipped 13/22 times - monitoring it future-tense vs past-tense. 

The last 5 years had -NAO Octobers. The last 5 years had +NAO Winters

Lowest NAO Winter on record, 09-10, had a +1.51 Oct NAO. 

The Pacific usually holds the same pattern between Oct and the Winter, although sometimes in El Nino's the EPO flips historically, not sure if that's true over more examples.  

[mattie g]

On 10/3/2026 at 10:01 AM, WxUSAF said:

02-03 winter in state college was epic and made up (mostly) for the dismal first 3 winters I had there. We had snow for Halloween 2002 and winter kept going until Easter 2003.

93-94 and 95-96 in Lewisburg were absolutely killer.

[CAPE]

3 hours ago, Terpeast said:

Was gonna respond to this with a plot I did years ago showing how the 500mb pattern over the east often reverses from October to DJF (eg east ridge winter after troughing in oct), but the plotting tool I’m using seems to be broken and I don’t have the time to try another tool. I also hadn’t broken it down between la nina and el nino years when I did it back then. What I meant was not only october snow, but the bigger picture of the overall pattern. But without the plots, I can’t make that case now. Oh well. 

I didn't mean to single you out, but keep seeing posts about how Oct snow means doom for winter. Maybe a case can be made about specific patterns that set up in October correlating to an overall unfavorable pattern for the winter.

[frd]

3 hours ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

NAO has a pretty good opposite correlation between October and the Winter. It's the only month of the year where that is true! Actually since "discovering that" in 2005, it's flipped 13/22 times - monitoring it future-tense vs past-tense. 

The last 5 years had -NAO Octobers. The last 5 years had +NAO Winters

Lowest NAO Winter on record, 09-10, had a +1.51 Oct NAO. 

The Pacific usually holds the same pattern between Oct and the Winter, although sometimes in El Nino's the EPO flips historically, not sure if that's true over more examples.  

[wxdude64]

On 9/28/2026 at 7:26 PM, SnowenOutThere said:

Made a PDF report of winter storms from WV during that winter. Looks like some moisture bomb gulf lows translated to major winter storms for the ridges. Should bring some solace to know that even if we completely torch this winter snow, and maybe a blizzard, will only be a drive away. 

SED_events.pdf 266 kB · 32 downloads

Charleston WV even has a map for a January event and notes the cutoff due to temperatures. Not sure I've ever seen a map like this! Look at the VA side, you have the blue ridge in Nelson county picking up over a foot of snow while the valleys had cold rain. 

LOTS of data missing from this, but my grandmother lived in Quinwood from 1988-2011, epic winters there!

The Jan 1998 data isn't there, but I KNOW they had 27" fall from that event, plus a few smaller ones the rest of the month. PS- I forgot about that incredible Feb in 2010 lol!

[Terpeast]

1 hour ago, CAPE said:

I didn't mean to single you out, but keep seeing posts about how Oct snow means doom for winter. Maybe a case can be made about specific patterns that set up in October correlating to an overall unfavorable pattern for the winter.

All good. With lack of time to do these analyses myself, I tend to make these one off comments going only by memory. But I probably shouldn’t do that, since I work in a different field now and my memory isn’t what it used to be