40/70 Benchmark

I never realized CC was so XXX.

We're onto next season.

It doesn't help that the increase in temps is more likely to be observed nocturnally, which doesn't help awareness/mindfullness. I'm not saying the daytime maxes aren't warming....they absolutely are, but it's just that it's realized to an even greater degree at night.

I went with +2 to +4 in my March review.

I would like to see the ONI coupled at around 1.7 or lower, and I bet we would see a better winter independent of the Modoki index.

It makes perfect sense to me that if the essence of El Nino is anonymously warm water modulating the Hadley Cell via enhanced convective activity, then warming up the water to the west of ENSO is going to reduce it's ability to do so because the MC is going to rob the ENSO region of some of that convection....ie it's a competing force.

I am willing to bet that if we were to ditch the gap between the RONI and ONI, or even have the ONI lag the RONI, we would get lower heights in the southeast....my guess is in order achieve that we are going continue to have to see that western Pac warmth spread eastward, which would help to reduce that persistent, residual cool ENSO residue. Again, don't mistake me overvaluing the RONI in-and-of-itself....it's what it represents, which is the surplus of western Pacific warmth relative to the eastern Pacific reducing the ability of +ENSO to couple with the atmosphere, and thus modulate the northern Pacific in the manner that we would like.

I was wondering about that...how do we trust such aged data...that said, I am not going to contest the fact that ambient heights were lower back then.

2015 having a weaker se trough relative to 1997 is entirely consistent with what I am proposing, since the RONI lagged the ONI in 2025, and it did not in 1997. I made the same mistake in 2015 that I did in 2023 in mistaking the warmer west Pacific for more of a Modoki signal. I will not do that again.

Makes sense with descending solar....probably more to come next several years.

I'll bet we can salvage that...we just ended an incredible decade of predominately +WPO....it just flipped this past season, so probably due for continued regression there.

I hope so.

Yea, looks like WPO is going to be key to salvage a decent northeast snowfall season...only 1982 wasn't a disaster, which has a -WPO.

Probably, so I am willing to bet it will stink, aside from maybe one great storm. I don't feel as optimistic after seeing that RONI vs ONI relationship, as I was already leery of that after 2023.. Still plenty of time to and data to consider, though. I do wonder if we see that gap begin to close, though with the changes underway in the Pacific..that maybe what we need.

You are misunderstanding me....I know what RONI is...it's not the reading itself that I am concerning myself with. It's what it represents....we WANT the El Niño to correlate to the North Pacific pattern, so having the RONI lag the ONI does not mean that it's a "weaker" El Niño...it means that there is another force, likely of cool ENSO ilk, competing with the El Nino, and it's not forcing the north Pac pattern to a degree commensurate with the ONI intensity. If it were simply a weaker El Niño....it's probably more west-based and the Aleutian low is thus further west, which is favorable....but a lower RONI may mimic a west-based in the SST pattern, but actually has so much warmth in the western Pacific as to introduce more MC forcing than is typical in a potent El Niño. We'll see what happens have a lower RONI again in another strong El Niño.