40/70 Benchmark

Does anyone know when the MEI will update? They said it was going to be late in June and just haven't updated since June 10...odd. I have just ingnored it this season, which sucks beause I usually like to use it.

I wish CPC would do this...CC has exacerbated this disconnect to the point where I make my own intensity composites now and don't even use CPC.

2024-2025 peaked with a RONI of -1.12 and an MEI of 1..borderline moderate. It was certainly a La Nina, again, unless you are tethering yourself to the ONI, which is ill-advised. It's important to be wholistic considering CC.

No...it wasn't. You keep asserting this, but check your facts. The MEI briefly touched 0.5 for one bi-monthlyh period and the RONI peaked at .24 in OND.

Not really debatable that it's a weak La Nina unless you soley rely on the archaic ONI. https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/indices/RONI.ascii.txt https://psl.noaa.gov/enso/mei/

KLWM It's a combo meal of bad patterns and bad luck...Chris is right that the PAC het has caused supression and cutters....but we have also had some bad breaks on a regional scale, and for me locally...we have had a couple of seasons that performed well regionally, but my specific area was still boned.

I looked back to 2016-2017....so not 10 years yet, but it will be because we aren't having an El Nino this season. I will give you 2018-2019 as a weak El Nino, but not 2019-2020...that was neutral. And if you are going to consider 2018-2019 El Nino, which is fine, then you have to consider 2024-2025 weak La Nina. Lets be consistent here.

2020-2021 was actually a pretty positive EPO, too...just wasn't that warm.

No, I wasn't implying that.....the implication was as stated....we are due for more aggressive regresson in other areas. I think wall-to-wall anything is difficult to pull off....2011-2012 did it, but February was close.

Social media has degraded forecasting just as it has society in general.

Thanks, Kevin.

We are "due" for a lot of things right now, but +EPO wouldn't be the most prominent item on my list. I mean...we have had 2 -WPO seasons over the past decade.....I haven't had one normal or above snowfall season in a decade. I won't include temps because we all know why that is. We have had 7 La Nina seasons out of 10 years, and 1 El Nino...and the El Nino season was still largely negated by the prominent cool ENSO hemispheric base state.

2019-2020 was pretty damn positive.

Complete and utter garbage...if you do a search on youtube, every year is the same nonsense with the blood-red "worst of winter" designation lurking somehere near the east coast.

It is a decent analog in general, but if the PNA is that negative again, I'll shave anthonymm into my crotch and post pics. That season with tamer RNA would be pretty good....the reason December had "no good storms" Is because the extreme RNA turned the pre XMAS east coast blizzard into a cutter when it it was forced to phase with the PV too far west. We also wasted what would have been a great March pattern because of the unfavorable west Pac working in conjunction with the severe RNA....get those areas a bit less hostile and it would have been good further south.

If you look at all of the record fall negative PDO seasons, they all rise precipitously throuought winter......a severely negative PDO all but ensures it rises. Maybe I wasn't clear enough...I am not saying the PDO will flip positive this winter, but rather it will be elevating steadily, which probably leads to some decent periods of PNA.

That Direct Weather site is brutal....all he does is hype and basically narate seasonal guidance.

I think part of this, not all, is due to the ++WPO that we have had the last decade.

PDO is likely in transition this year, as the modest La Nina fades and we begin to work towards warm ENSO.

I think January will turn markedly colder in the second half, but cold probably out weighted by warmth, especially east.

Stratospheric Reflection events, which are triggered by Pacific trough regimes, trigger a transition to AK ridging and colder patterns across the CONUS. They are more common in +QBO seasons (30/44 since 1980), which is maybe what snowman was getting at....but I am going against the grain a bit in feeling as though we get one due to the prevlence of them in my analogs. Usually very warm a few days prior to a few days after the start, but it begins turning colder quickly....so I guess you could say mid January warmth. Early to mid-January, anyway.

Well, the warmth usually preceedes reflection events due to a Pacific trough regime, so if you have one mid month, the warmth would be earlier...maybe 2nd week? But really no need to split hairs at this range.

Here is a review of the QBO/Solar relationship for review/reference: The aforementioned Holton-Tan relationship, which dictates that an easterly QBO is correlated with both a greater incidence of, and an earlier development of SSW, becomes more complicated when considering the solar cycle. In some cases, when the QBO and solar cycle are in conflict, they can either over ride one another or even cancel each other out (Gray et al 2004). Here is a list of combinations and the theorized relationships for clarity. Solar min/W QBO: This is entirely consistent with the Holton-Tan relationship in that the westerly QBO essentially "wins". The PV is likely to be stronger than average until the final warming in spring. Solar max/W QBO: In this case, the Holton-Tan relationship is applicable early on in the season, as major warmings are unlikely. However, the Holton-Tan relationship reverses mid winter and the latter portion of the season from February onward is susceptible to warmings and major PV disruption. Winter 2024-2025 was a textbook example of this. Solar Min/E QBO: There are no inconsistencies here, as the entire season is more prone to polar vortex disruptions and SSW as per the Holton-Tan relationship. Solar Max/E QBO (2025-2026): The Holton-Tan relationship applies early on given that PV disruptions are likely in December, before the relationship reverses and they are less likely later in the season. The final warming is of course the exception to this rule, while it is usually more relevant for spring, it can and does sometimes occur early enough to have an impact for the major population centers in terms of late season cold and/or snowfall.

Yes, intuitively this is correct.....but that mid season SSW outlier group matches this year pretty well with respect to the solar and exact QBO. This is why I hedge towards the mid season SSW....will I be shocked if it doesn't work out? Nope- I do agree with a PV surge in early January after a rather tepid start, which likely concides with a stratospheric reflection event and subsequent +NAO/ poleward Aleutian ridging ala 2001, 2002, 2014, 2018. Probably a pretty warm stretch early in January.

Yes and no....I agree generally with what you are saying, but it's not the warming itself that is prohibitive to having good seasons....it's the western warm pool in-and-of-itself that is the reason NAO blocking hasn't been paying dividends....AKA +WPO. Do me a favor and find a great SNE season that also had a strongly +WPO......you can't find one...not in 1948, and not in 2025. https://psl.noaa.gov/data/correlation/wp.data Extreme +WPO being prohibitive isn't a recent development, but rather the consistency and strength of it is. Since 2016-2017, 2021-2022 is the only -WPO season we have had......the concern is that this is some sort of permanent pattern as a result of CC. While we won't know definitely for another 10 years or so, I am still of the opinion that the globe will find a way to achieve balance, and will wait before seeing otherwise. As for the WPO....we here in SNE can thrive with a modestly +WPO value, as was the case in 2017-2018....and yes, we can still get a -WPO season, as was the case in 2021-2022. That being said, SSTs over the eastern Indian ocean do look supportive of +WPO, but the hope is that more abundant E PAC warmth can counter that in much the same manner that the West warm Pool did with El Nino a couple of seasons back...think Relative Ocean Nino Index https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/indices/RONI.ascii.txt Always remeber that NOTHING operates in a vacuum, so don't obsess too over any single point on the globe, as ultimately it is not what is going on at said point that is paramount, but rather what is going on at said point relative to the rest of the globe.