raindancewx

The clustering below of big bad storms reminds of me some periods in the 1930s and 1960s. Carla (1961), Hilda (1964), Betsy (1965), Beulah (1967) Camille (1969) for some comparable Gulf monsters to the recent four. That period from 1964-1969 was pretty rough down there. Freeport (1932), 1933 - several Gulf Coast hits and a nasty stronger Isabel too for the NE, Hurricane "1" in 1934 is kind of legendary in some ways, 1935 had the five in the Keys, and then 1938 had the New England hurricane and a hurricane hit the central Gulf. 1933 is a nuts season, but 1932 doesn't really get it's due. Carla: 1961 (931 mb right before Landfall, similar spot to Laura, likely similar to Laura for winds too) Hilda: 1964 (950 mb at landfall) - stronger Oct 1964 version of Delta in October 2020 (970 mb) Betsy: 1965 (942 mb, hit right near Houma like Ida) Beulah: 1967 (950 mb landfall S. Texas, lots of floods and tornadoes) Camille 1969 (900 mb just around landfall - 175 mph winds based on observations)

Let's keep nuking this god damned drought.

Lots of rain in southern New Mexico in May, June, July and August has it looking quite lovely. Probably not so apparent if you just look at the drought monitor instead of the vegetation. September is negatively correlated pretty well to cold season precipitation patterns in La Ninas down here. This has my attention -

Nino1+2 Nino3 Nino34 Nino4 Week SST SSTA SST SSTA SST SSTA SST SSTA 04AUG2021 21.7 0.7 25.1-0.2 26.7-0.3 28.6-0.2 11AUG2021 20.9 0.1 24.8-0.4 26.5-0.4 28.6-0.2 18AUG2021 20.5-0.1 24.4-0.6 26.0-0.9 28.6-0.2 25AUG2021 20.6 0.0 25.0-0.0 26.5-0.3 28.5-0.3 05AUG2020 19.8-1.3 24.6-0.7 26.3-0.7 28.4-0.4 12AUG2020 19.9-0.9 24.8-0.4 26.4-0.6 28.3-0.5 19AUG2020 19.5-1.1 24.3-0.7 26.0-0.9 28.4-0.4 26AUG2020 20.0-0.6 24.2-0.8 26.1-0.7 28.6-0.2 The blend of the four weekly readings comes out to 26.4C or so in Nino 3.4. Still tracking very similarly to 1967 in the western zones. The blend I'm testing in September is still close 1967, 2001-02 (x2), 2011-12, 2013-14 (x2), 2020-21 (x2) to what the monthly data should be for 2021. If the weeklies are similar to the monthly August data, Nino 1.2 is much warmer than last year, with Nino 3, 3.4 and 4 0.1-0.3C warmer too. Subsurface is probably a touch colder overall in August, but it hasn't worked up yet, and has to wash away much more warmth. https://www.psl.noaa.gov/data/correlation/nina34.data 1967 25.88 26.11 26.50 26.74 27.35 27.47 26.97 26.44 25.86 25.97 26.08 25.95 2021 25.54 25.75 26.49 27.10 27.48 27.45 26.97 26.45? 99.99 -99.99 -99.99 -99.99 https://www.psl.noaa.gov/data/correlation/nina4.data 1967 27.60 27.41 27.82 28.44 28.76 28.58 28.52 28.32 28.20 28.33 28.34 28.15 2021 27.26 27.23 27.67 28.19 28.70 28.83 28.68 28.55? -99.99 -99.99 -99.99 -99.99

8/1-8/30 SOI: +3.7 The three La Nina SOI matches for June-August look like what the CFS has for September.

The Cajun Navy is starting to make rescues as in prior flood events. You can give them your location if you need assistance.

The 1938 hurricane season, besides the famous New England storm, had a hurricane ("3") hit the central Gulf Coast in August on a path to the west of the Ida. It was a La Nina year too.

There aren't many hurricanes at this time of year, in this position in the Gulf of Mexico that see rapid intensification, on the order of say, Cat 1/2 to 4/5 in a day or less. A lot of the famous recent storms actually weaken somewhat as they approach, will be curious to see which genre this is. Katrina would have been insane if it had been strengthening up until landfall. I've seen mentions of Katrina and Camille, but Gustav (2008) has been fairly similar too, by timing, magnitude and track. Gustav: 26.9N / 87.7W, 953 mb, 110 mph sustained winds (8/29 UTC) Ida: 27.2N / 88W, moving NW 16 mph, 964 mb, 105 mph sustained winds (9/1 by UTC)

The rains over TN are going to be trouble given the recent circumstances if this has any pop left after landfall.

I was looking at arctic sea ice extent mins in September to see if there is any relationship with the various indexes for winter. The sea ice mins correlate relatively well (r-squared is 0.13 or so from 1979-2020) to the winter WPO. But WPO values have been trending more positively in the 1979-2020 period for winter anyway. So it's likely an auto-correlation thing. The thing with the subsurface is it does correlate with the winter values for Nino 3.4 pretty well in August - r-squared is over 0.7 if you use a polynomial trend line. But the "variance" off the trend line is still +/-0.6C at ~95%. So you can have a -0.8 subsurface in August and end up at a 26.1C Nino 3.4 in winter. The best fit line for a -1.0 subsurface in August is a 25.6C La Nina in winter, about -1.0C against the 1991-2020 baseline CPC uses, but only -0.9C against the 1951-2010 baseline that seems to "work" better for ENSO conditions switching on/off. I think we're closer to -0.8 or -0.9 for August than -1.0 though in the subsurface data. At the end of the day, there has not been a La Nina stronger / colder than 25.5C in a full winter in over a decade. CPC seems to think La Ninas should be classified based on warming math baselines to account for the warmer oceans. To me, that seems wrong. The "strong" La Ninas in the old/cold days don't look like the modern "strong" La Ninas. There is no guarantee of strong or moderate La Ninas even at a once a decade level for winter. I personally think we're in a broadly similar period to the 1950s/1960s now, and if you look, we went from 1955-56 to 1970-71 without a La Nina below 25.5C in winter, and then we went from 1975-76 to 1988-89 without a La Nina below 25.5C in winter. So even at 11+ years, the current streak of weak La Ninas or warmer is not that close to the 15 year record. (1988 to 98, 1999 to 2007, 2010 to now are the most recent streaks).

August comparison, scaled to find waters cold enough to be a La Nina. Still not ahead of last year at the surface or close to it. Much warmer in the zones, but especially no huge batch of cold waters by South America (blues and purples).

The models are idiotic, but it's not a consistent idiotic. You don't seem to get that CPC uses a warmer baseline (1991-2020) than the models do (1981-2010). That alone is worth 0.10-0.20C of warming in some months. You can see it plainly in the data: https://origin.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ONI_change.shtmlDec 1950: ONI is -0.88C, Nino 3.4 was 25.29C Dec 2020: ONI is -1.15C, Nino 3.4 was 25.45C. Maybe I'm crazy, but I consider 1950-51 a much stronger La Nina that 2020-21. https://origin.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/detrend.nino34.ascii.txt

At this point of the year, I winnow down my potential analog year blends to a top six blends. Here is 7/23-8/22 for 2021 against 1967, 2001, 2011, 2013, 2020. I looked at four zones that are interesting for each year back to 1950: 1) a very negative Indian Ocean Dipole (very hot by Indonesian waters, cold by east Africa). Of the years I picked 1967 and 2011 do not have this. This is important for the MJO and how ENSO events sustain/change. 2) a cold ENSO primarily south of the equator in this time frame, with a much weaker area of cold toward Indonesia than by Peru. 2011 has the cold extension south and north of the equator. A lot of "S. Hem" La Ninas seem to be colder in the South (2010, 2011, 2020, etc). 3) the "cold AMO" ring in the East Atlantic. This is fairly close to 1967. 4) a warm, but cooling North Pacific with similar sst configurations generally. This is generally a weakening -PDO look by NE Asia somewhat like 1967 and others shown. When you roll the 30-day period from blending those years forward, you get decent matches to the most current ocean conditions globally, and also US weather. August has looked a lot like 1967 and 2001 as a blend. You can see based on the weeklies, that the blend should be pretty close for August in all Nino zones. I added in my local Summer 2021 highs and precipitation on the right - they look close too. I also rolled forward the top matches for each Nino zone in 2021. Generally, 1967 is an awesome match for 2021 in Nino 3.4/4, but shitty to the east. So each Nino zone is forecast individually. But I'm pretty convinced we won't stray from 1967 much in the western zones through at least December. That means this really isn't likely to be a Modoki La Nina as I thought before, especially since the warmth below the surface is oozing to 170W, the edge of Nino 3.4, already. The blend selected is also a relatively strong match in the four Nino zones for last winter (2020-21), and I do value the transitions somewhat. My blends weight seven factors for winter at 6.67%-20% weight each, but I treat winter ENSO and year/year transitions as different variables. My current leading analog package of the six I still like is 1967-68, 2001-02, 2011-12, 2013-14, 2020-21 as a blend, at some weight. I use this period to "test" for winter by seeing how the blends do in September. Leaning to splitting it up like this: Temp Analogs: 1967-68 (x2), 2013-14 (x3), +2001-02 to warm it all up. 2011 would be fifth ranked for temps (near perfectly opposite each month since April), and 2020 would be fourth (likely much warmer than the upcoming Dec). Precip Analogs: 2001-02 (x2), 2011-12 (x3), +2020-21 for -NAO/+WPO periods. 1967 would be fourth, and 2013 would be fifth (nearly opposite hurricane season – very little activity, different monsoon, etc.). If you look, years like 2016 and 2017 do match US weather at times in recent weeks. The issue is Nino 4 is trending much differently, and the hurricane season of 2017 also looks very dissimilar. I am struggling with what to do with solar, because I don't have a good method for high the activity will get this year. I don't really have an overall weighting yet, but I'm relatively happy splitting the five years as I have for now.

I'm fairly optimistic for snow in the Northeast down to about Virginia at the moment. Don't think it will be cold overall though, or even that wet. What reason do I have for that? The +WPO sort of fought off the -NAO signal in January in 2021 for you guys. Will that happen again if it goes negative? It could, but the WPO+ was at record levels in January, and it's a warm/anti-snow signal for a lot of the eastern US. I'm optimistic again for blocking at this juncture for the winter, but with less +WPO influence. You can sort of see the -NAO v. +WPO fight last January. Both are snowy signals out here, which is part of why I was fairly optimistic for SW snowfall last year despite the La Nina. It was a top five snowfall year since 2000 in Albuquerque even with the total precipitation for Oct-Mar something like -40% compared to averages. Not like it was particularly cold overall, despite some impressive bursts in Sept/Oct, Feb/Mar.

It's on the first page of the thread with the explanation for the change. Nino1+2 Nino3 Nino34 Nino4 Week SST SSTA SST SSTA SST SSTA SST SSTA 07JUL2021 22.2 0.1 26.0-0.0 27.4-0.0 28.9-0.1 14JUL2021 22.2 0.4 25.9 0.1 27.2-0.1 28.6-0.4 21JUL2021 22.1 0.6 25.2-0.4 26.8-0.5 28.5-0.4 28JUL2021 22.1 0.8 25.1-0.4 26.7-0.4 28.7-0.1 04AUG2021 21.7 0.7 25.1-0.2 26.7-0.3 28.6-0.2 11AUG2021 20.9 0.1 24.8-0.4 26.5-0.4 28.6-0.2 18AUG2021 20.5-0.1 24.4-0.6 26.0-0.9 28.6-0.2 19AUG2020 19.5-1.1 24.3-0.7 26.0-0.9 28.4-0.4 We're still running as warm as last year in Nino 3.4, and warmer most weeks. Other zones remain warmer. The subsurface cooling crash from July to early August seems to be over, with those waters holding at -0.8 or -0.9 month to date. I consider 26.15C (-0.5C v. 1951-2010 in August in Nino 3.4) to be La Nina conditions for the month. But we're still around 26.47C if you go by the weeklies. The monthly data may run a bit under that when next week is included. But probably not below 26.25C or 26.30C - not La Nina conditions yet. Tentative Jun-Aug SOI matches (if it finishes around +4 in August) include Jun-Aug 1939, 1947, 1974, 1979, 1999, 2011.

Here is 1938 track for comparison. Of course the timing, intensity and forward speed are completely different. I suspect this July was the wettest for you guys since that year, so it's interesting seeing the tracks so similar, at least as projected now. The 1937-38 July-June year was my top local match for precipitation to 2020-21 out of all years in the past 100, so I'm not real surprised that we've had a Summer with similar enough jet-stream / high / low positioning for this type of track to happen. A lot of your hurricane hits do seem to pass that magical ~32N/72W spot. In the old days, a hurricane was supposed to have a surface pressure under 980 mb on the saffir-simpson scale. At 994 mb...it's kind of meh in terms of strength by that measure.

Atlantic is currently similar to warmed up August 1938. Pacific is very different unfortunately.

https://bitesizevegan.org/environment/everything-wrong-with-environmentalism-in-11-minutes-or-less/ Any of you ever see this? It's pretty well sourced. I basically agree with her that it's asinine to pretend to care about the environment and eat meat. I love meat, but I also don't pretend to be an environmentalist. The figures she cites for meat production per acre line up pretty well with what ranchers tell me.

https://www.vox.com/21507802/wildfire-2020-california-indigenous-native-american-indian-controlled-burn-fire Good example of why I personally find reporting on the fires and drought to be so shitty from people who don't seem to know anything about the history of land management out here. As is usually the case with the climate stuff, human stupidity is a much larger contributor to local events than actual warming or precipitation pattern changes. This is very similar to what the old trees look like here in the old forests that have not had major fires in decades or centuries. As is usually the case in my experience, the instinct of modern environmentalism is to "preserve" nature at all costs, when it reality, the goal should be to evaluate what is "the healthy normal" and maintain that, rather than simply preserving what is 'natural', but often unhealthy. The environmental movement doesn't seem to understand that natural doesn't actually mean good. The idea the Europeans came to the US and found a fully 'natural and untouched' landscape has always been laughably stupid and insanely racist with regards to the capabilities of the Natives, but it does seem to the basis for a lot of green thoughts about what America was pre-1600.

One of the main contributors to the cooling by Japan -

The Summer AMO / Atlantic warmth is pretty well correlated with sea ice extent this time of year. It's been running colder than it has in quite a while. The raw "untrended" AMO figure was 22.869C for the Atlantic in July. That's the coldest since 2018 in July, and it is relatively comparable to the warmest years in prior warm AMO cycles like 1960 (22.738C), especially if you assume there has been more than 0.15C warming since 1960 in SSTs. The 'recovery' year of 2013 was partly driven by a large drop in AMO/Atlantic warmth too. July 2012 was 22.986C, and then July 2013 was only 22.804C.

I never bothered looking at this until today, but my analog blend for last winter was pretty good at 500 mb. Main issue was not having enough high pressure over Greenland. Only had Dec negative for a neutral winter. The closest blend to last winter that matches on the very cold Nino 4, very high +WPO, and -NAO winter is 1959-60 (x2), 2007-08, 2008-09. This is the time of year I start to figure out if the WPO will be positive or negative. It's very rare for it be very positive in a La Nina like last year, when it was actually record positive overall. You can see that the difference in snow in the top +WPO and top -WPO winters are pretty large in the I-40 corridor. The map is pretty different from the El Nino snow composite map, despite most high WPO+ years occurring in El Ninos.

Can't really do it for the EPO, because there is no index tracked for December because of how it behaves that month. I am working on one for the WPO, because that's a big deal for US temperatures in Feb-Apr, and also Sept-Nov, which are both snowy periods in the West. The +WPO coupled with the real cold Nino 4 is actually real rare in terms of winters. You had a record +WPO winter with a La Nina, it's nearly unheard of. It was a super -WPO in Fall too.

Weatherbell has winters starting in 2003, 2005, 2008, 2017, 2020 as the winter analog blend at the moment. I liked 2003 as a low weighted analog for 2020-21 last year, so that doesn't surprise me too much as a comparable year to 2020 even though it is warm ENSO. It was very close to 2020 in December, and then February 2004 was not terrible as a match to February 2021. The most interesting thing about that group is that each becomes an El Nino following winter...except for 2020-21. To their credit, that blend does at least look like current conditions in the tropics and for US temperatures. It's also a pretty warm winter. https://www.weatherbell.com/prelim-2021-22-winter-outlook

You guys were the winners when I looked at the importance of the NAO to snowfall nationally for 1950-51 to 2020-21. I used 'normalized' on the map, but the raw math is better really, just top ten -NAO winter average snowfall divided by top ten +NAO winter average snowfall, on the same scale (10 inches average for everybody). "Winter" is all snow that falls July-June if based on how the NAO behaved in winter. The normalized is me pretending to measure the difference from the NAO on a ten-inch standard for everyone. Snow +NAO -NAO +NAO -NAO normalized raw Caribou 0.20% 8.30% 10.02 10.83 8.10% 8.08% Bangor -9.30% 20.70% 9.07 12.07 30.00% 33.08% Boston -6.00% 1.20% 9.4 10.12 7.20% 7.66% Albany -16.30% 0.05% 8.37 10.005 16.35% 19.53% Buffalo -19.70% 13.60% 8.03 11.36 33.30% 41.47% NYC -4.20% 22.00% 9.58 12.2 26.20% 27.35% Philly -14.80% 42.20% 8.52 14.22 57.00% 66.90% Harrisburg -10.60% 29.50% 8.94 12.95 40.10% 44.85% Pittsburgh -15.00% 14.00% 8.5 11.4 29.00% 34.12% Richmond -4.70% 46.20% 9.53 14.62 50.90% 53.41% Roanoke -21.30% 63.80% 7.87 16.38 85.10% 108.13% Charlotte -23.90% 69.00% 7.61 16.9 92.90% 122.08% Elkins -10.80% 11.10% 8.92 11.11 21.90% 24.55% Cleveland -16.70% -1.70% 8.33 9.83 15.00% 18.01% Cincy -26.10% 34.50% 7.39 13.45 60.60% 82.00% Louisville -22.50% 46.00% 7.75 14.6 68.50% 88.39% Paducah -10.90% 69.80% 8.91 16.98 80.70% 90.57% Indianapolis -28.40% 22.20% 7.16 12.22 50.60% 70.67% Detroit -13.70% -5.90% 8.63 9.41 7.80% 9.04% Chicago -22.20% 23.70% 7.78 12.37 45.90% 59.00% Marquette 10.40% -16.40% 11.04 8.36 -26.80% -24.28% Des Moines -15.20% 17.90% 8.48 11.79 33.10% 39.03% Omaha 10.80% 74.50% 11.08 17.45 63.70% 57.49% Nashville -49.50% 158.50% 5.05 25.85 208.00% 411.88% Memphis -35.20% 107.50% 6.48 20.75 142.70% 220.22% Knoxville -49.80% 118.70% 5.02 21.87 168.50% 335.66% Little Rock -20% 85.60% 8 18.56 105.60% 132.00% St Louis -40.40% 29.60% 5.96 12.96 70.00% 117.45% OKC -19.30% 40.80% 8.07 14.08 60.10% 74.47% Tulsa -22.70% 49.00% 7.73 14.9 71.70% 92.76% Witchita -13.70% 39.40% 8.63 13.94 53.10% 61.53% Dodge City -27% 2.30% 7.3 10.23 29.30% 40.14% Kansas City -40.90% 43.50% 5.91 14.35 84.40% 142.81% Amarillo -8.70% -1.50% 9.13 9.85 7.20% 7.89% El Paso 19.80% 10.20% 11.98 11.02 -9.60% -8.01% Albuquerque -9.20% 23.90% 9.08 12.39 33.10% 36.45% Los Alamos -11.40% 18.30% 8.86 11.83 29.70% 33.52% Flagstaff -8.90% 9.10% 9.11 10.91 18.00% 19.76% Pueblo 10.50% -13.40% 11.05 8.66 -23.90% -21.63% Denver -0.80% -10.10% 9.92 8.99 -9.30% -9.38% Grand Junction -25.40% 25.50% 7.46 12.55 50.90% 68.23% Cheyenne 13.70% -18.50% 11.37 8.15 -32.20% -28.32% Billings -8.60% 10.00% 9.14 11 18.60% 20.35% Bismarck -3.70% -2.60% 9.63 9.74 1.10% 1.14% Rapid City 5.30% 3.10% 10.53 10.31 -2.20% -2.09% Minneapolis -6.50% -9.20% 9.35 9.08 -2.70% -2.89% Missoula -23.50% 6.30% 7.65 10.63 29.80% 38.95% Boise -23.90% 15.60% 7.61 11.56 39.50% 51.91% Pocatello -18.90% 1.20% 8.11 10.12 20.10% 24.78% Salt Lake City -21.40% 11.20% 7.86 11.12 32.60% 41.48% Reno -10.60% 10.00% 8.94 11 20.60% 23.04% Spokane -20.50% -1.50% 7.95 9.85 19.00% 23.90%