40/70 Benchmark

I would describe it as rethinking the assumption that a parochial approach to seasonal forecasting will be good enough.....ENSO, and SSTs in general along with every other variable, needs to be contexualized relative to the rest of the globe, which is precisely what RONI attempts to do. Its not the SSTs themselves that are the primary drivers of the hemispheric pattern, but rather the gradients. This is why we need to view ENSO RELATIVE to the western Pacific, and within the context of tropical forecasting, SSTs RELATIVE to the subtropics. It doesn't matter how extreme ENSO is (warm/cold) if the western Pacific is every bit as anomalous. Likewise, bathwater SSTs in and of themselves are not conducive if the subtropics are even more anomalously warm because the atmosphere will lack the requsite instability and CAPE to foster adequate convection. This season is a wonderful lesson in how to engage in tropical forecasting on a seasonal level in a warming climate just as the El Nino of 2023-2024 was very instructive with respect to mid latitude seasonal forecasting.

After these past seven seasons, I'd sacrafice my right testicle for that season....but normallu, I would describe it is very ordinary and yawnstipating.

Cold relative to current climo, yes.

https://psl.noaa.gov/gcos_wgsp/Timeseries/Data/dmi.had.long.data

It really wasn't anything remarkable in terms of sensible weather for my area....maybe 10% above average snowfall with no huge events. Cold was nothing out of the ordinary, either.

Take a wild, crazy, absolute out-of-left-field guess about what his response may entail...go ahead-go nuts....

SSWs are no sure-thing...agreed. They are a wild card, but I think at this point, most of us are willing to flip that coin.

It least he has a few flakes dancing around the bad news

UK with the same gradient we have seen for the past several years, just north of my hood....I'll remove my spleen with a pair of pliers if this happens again.

January blows

Decent snow for December on the EURO

Yes, completely buy the poleward Aleutian ridging and trough being centered to our west...this is why I said while I don't think this will be a terrible winter for most of us, I also don't expect it to be a KU cookbook, either. There are going to messy systems, both in terms of precip type and/or verying degrees of phasing failures. I do think that the EURO has things biased a bit too far to the west, though.

Yea, I expect the cold to again be centered over the northern plains and possibly GL.

The mean DM PNA value for the 4 seasons mentioned in raindance's post above is +.15, which affirms my suspicion of a variable PNA that averages near neutral this season. I don't see that huge negative values in the mean, and I think that notion that it has to be because it's a second year La Nina is every bit as dibious as that fallacy that all triple dip La Ninas have to be cold. Anticipate deeply negative PNA in the mean during the coming winter season at your own peril IMHO.

While that does look like a season that certainly won't be prohibitvely warm in the mean, that doesn't exactly scream KU snowstorms to me, either....still looks like more of an overrunning and SWFE pardigm to me. I think the window for any big fish will be later in the season.

Down to 43.3 this AM....topped out at 70.7. Already back to 48.7

This also what I am alluding to when I tell folks to not obsess over the absolute PDO value, as it's the trend that is more important.

This composite looks like a lot of my preliminary stuff. Extratropical Pacific, Polar and EMI composites.

Well, it is getting more difficult to get very cold winters in an absolute sense (against shifting climo is different)....that said, it's not as pronounced where you live as it is on the east coast.

@snowman19My guess is that while the majority of the season is -PNA, we are gong to have month that is gong to be strongly +PNA....probably coinciding with +NAO mid season before any SSW. Season probably averages pretty close to neautral with a slight hedge towards negative.

You mean +PNA?

Not sure winter averages +PNA per se, but it should be volatile.

I think that will be dependent on the stratosphere.....seeing potential for a mid winter event, which would trigger a reload.

I think you are obfuscating the PDO and WPO a bit. I think a severely +WPO does cap most of the mid atl and SNE at a near normal snowfall season....but I was referring to the PDO more in my response to you. There are plenty of severely negative PDO seasons that were very snowy in the east, but most of them are aged analogs due to the WPO, which has been biased very positive this decade by the warm pool. I don't think it needs to cool as much as you think to remain positve, but to a degree that isn't as prohibitive to wintry weather in the eastern US.

@snowman19You seem to pointing out why 2013 isn't a replica analog rather than why we can't see similar sensible weather adjusted for CC....as far as the former, I agree...no season really is; but I think the latter is entirely feasible.