roardog

I thought DT used to say it was a strong negative QBO that he believed resulted in a strong pacific jet. This was like 20 or 25 years ago that I’m talking about so my memory might be wrong.

There’s a pretty big difference between +4 and +8 at any given location. That’s as bad as a Farmer’s Almanac forecast.

He’s actually banned from the mid Atlantic forum. It is too bad he has the post limit. I also hope he keeps posting here. He seems like a good guy but I can see how he could be annoying in the lead up to a storm. That’s probably how he ended up with the post limit and ban from the mid Atlantic forum.

When you look at it, 22-23 wasn’t that far from being a good winter here. If the western trough/eastern ridge would have been just a little less amplified, the cold air would have certainly oozed into our region since it was available in Canada most of the winter and the storm tracks would have been more SE. I actually had a lot of snow on the ground at the end of that winter because late February brought a couple of big snows back to back. At least with that type of pattern there is hope with cold nearby. Those super/strong Nino patterns like last winter offer no hope since Canada is blow torched. The 01-02 type winters that have the massive Alaskan vortex don’t seem to happen too often thankfully, at least not to that extent.

From here in the Great Lakes over to New England, there are generally two ways to get a very warm winter in a Nina. 1. 22-23 style where you have arctic air coming into Canada but it’s dumping into the western half of the US because the pattern is so amplified. This gives us a lot of warm but dreary days since we are constantly getting warm and moist air masses coming from the southern US. 2. 01-02/11-12 style where there’s a massive vortex around Alaska which doesn’t allow any Arctic air to move into the southern half of Canada therefore keeping the entire US outside of Alaska warm. This is generally a more pleasant winter warmth here as it usually has less moisture/stratus around. I know studies have been done that show an active sun can lead to a lesser chance of high latitude blocking but I’m not totally convinced it was solely to blame for the massive Alaskan vortex in the 01-02 winter. I think it was used as a convenient excuse for blown forecasts that winter.

The seasonal models are useless for 2M temp anomalies. They just default to warm everywhere. There aren’t many guarantees in weather but one thing I can guarantee is that even though the planet is warm, there will be negative anomalies on land somewhere on earth unlike what that map shows.

The 30 day SOI is at -9.22. I think that’s more negative than last year at this time with a strong Nino developing.

What was the QBO in 01-02?

I believe the upper atmosphere has longer lag when it comes to warming and cooling. Also, looking at that graph, I don’t know how anyone can think that sudden warming could have been caused entirely by the strong Nino or greenhouse gases. I mean the graph shoots straight up.

After the last couple of winters, I wouldn’t even mind a 02-03 style winter that gave the east coast lots of snow but gave us respectable cold even though it was fairly dry, especially west and north of SE Michigan.

If I recall correctly there actually was a -NAO block in the second half of December 2001. Canada was still filled with relatively mild air though which only allowed the US to get near average cold. I remember there being a huge SW flow lake effect snow event which buried Buffalo since the water was mild from the warm November and first half of December.

Paul did a great job last year forecasting the strong Nino even when things looked questionable. Maybe he’s on to something.

I still remember the misery of no power after the July ‘95 derecho because it was so hot.

I guess that was kind of my point. Every year you get some dramatic news story or tweet about how low the sea ice is like it's never happened before when in reality it happens every summer now. Even if for some reason, the sea ice started to recover(I doubt it actually will)it would take decades to fully recover just like it took decades to decrease to where it is now. It would be a very slow process. I don't think it's even possible to have anything but near record low sea ice every summer with so much multi year ice gone.

I think it means 8th lowest for the date not 8th lowest overall since he was comparing it to the mean for each decade on that date.

This isn’t even all that bad in today’s world. If we ended the melt season at 8th lowest, we would be doing pretty good all things considered.

I know I’ve brought up Joe Daleo a lot in this thread but it’s because I’ve read a lot of relevant stuff from him about this topic over the years. Another interesting tidbit he talks about is how we tend to only have weak enso events when the solar cycle is descending. He says it’s usually Nino, sometimes strong around max then weak enso events during the descending period. If we have peaked, maybe weak(ONI) is favored.

Is Canada on fire again? Is that what today's smoke is from.

Yeah. I don’t think there’s much doubt that all the extra moisture around the planet is responsible for the warmer lows. It’s probably also why the Arctic is always well above average in the cold season but not so much during the warm season. If you add just a little moisture to a very cold airmass, it will warm significantly but it doesn’t have the same effect in the summer when it’s not nearly as cold.

There were a couple of hours around here this morning too where there were no obs. Probably just some glitch.

They just took the holiday off. They’ll be back tomorrow.

What exactly qualifies as death ridge around here anyway? Wasn’t that stretch of hot weather across much of the sub in June a death ridge? I mean if someone is expecting Texas level heat all summer anywhere in this sub you’re going to be disappointed. lol Anyone on this board should know better than to believe seasonal forecasting media hype.

The temp anomalies last winter across the US looked strikingly similar to ‘72-‘73. As we know, that winter featured an ONI very close to what this past winter had. It also had a -PDO as we all know. The individual months were different(December ‘72 had some Arctic air around while this past winter we had that in January) but December, January and February totaled up look very similar. So I think maybe we can say it acted like a very strong/borderline super Nino with a -PDO.

I hoped they installed.