40/70 Benchmark

You absolutely nailed that...full credit. While my outlook went up in flames, it was one of the more instructional experiences that I have had in seasonal forecasting. This is why I always say the ones that are missed are our most valuable resources. We saw something similar with the 1972-1973 El Nino, but obviously this was warmer given CC. I think this year we may see something similar in that seasonals will overbake ENSO into the output.

It's all interconnected somewhat and we don't yet fully grasp how, nor the full breadth of the ramifications of said connection.

I would still take 1995-1996 over 2014-2015....but it's close. Having the holiday season cold/snowy is the deciding factor for me.

I totally buy that...I have been adamant that I don't think the PNA is going to be a negative as the consensus does. However, the west Pacific will likely continue to be an issue to some degree....not to the degree that it was on 2022-2023, though.

Depends on how severely positive the WPO is. I think it's important to stop tethering ourselves to these absolute rules because nothing in the atmosphere operates in a vacuum. I think @Stormchaserchuck1put it best...."question everything"-

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.