raindancewx

We're at 3.9" officially in Albuquerque for November 2019, and a lot of the front range cities are well above average too. In years with at least two inches of November snow in Albuquerque, we average another 10 inches of snow from Dec-May. Historically 3:1 to see above average snow here after at least two inches in November. It's a pretty reliable indicator statistically. If we get to 13 inches or more, that's typically bad for the NE in El Ninos. Nino 3.4 has been over 27.0C since late Sept, with the subsurface warm and the SOI negative. So I consider this an El Nino.

If you use absolute value to score past 100 years for how they match to the observed highs from July-Nov in Albuquerque, you get this as your expected blend for December, ranked by how good the match is: 1960 1943 2011 1982 2018 1953 1983 1997 1948 1959 Believe it or not, that blend actually has the core of cold in November by the Mississippi river, like this November. 1943, the second strongest objective match in 100 years, is actually the coldest December in the last 100 years for a lot of the Southwest. None of those Decembers are warm in the Southwest, but most are very cold (1943, 1953, 1960, 1982, 1997, 2011). If soil moisture means anything, the record moisture in November in Arizona and New Mexico should prevent significant heating for a while. (This map doesn't even include today - I'm running over 4x average precip in Nov now, literally 1.99" v. an average of 0.46"). Big wildcard is if the SOI really does go positive in December like the CFS has been showing for a week. The dry central/eastern US did warm up a lot in the last week.

The CFS is still showing a +SOI look for December. Part of me thinks some kind of reigning in of the subtropical jet stream is due. November 2019 has just topped 1991 to become the wettest November in over 100 years in Albuquerque - and it happened in essentially two weeks.

I had 7.5 inches of snow in my backyard with the Nov 27-28 storm. The airport had 3.9". The general totals city wide seem to have been 4-8 inches. Mountain snow pack is in excellent shape as of this morning.

You guys make assumptions all the time about the NAO, PNA, EPO, WPO, etc being in the correct phase when only 30 years in a given phase exist. Bit inconsistent there?

SOI is -9.8 for the past 30-days, -9.3 for the past 90 days, and -10 for November to date. I've got 7.5 inches of snow in my backyard, with near record precipitation for November (1.65") through 11 am 11/28. A lot of that near record precipitation is snow...which is certainly more of an El Nino thing than a Neutral thing here - PDO still looks somewhat negative to me for November - you can have warm waters on the NW North America coast if they are relatively cold compared to waters off to their West and have a -PDO month. It's a relational calculation, not absolute like ENSO, where warm is El Nino, cold is La Nina. Subsurface still looks warm to me. The little cold pocket is going to get its ass kicked in the coming weeks. The warm waters continue to surface by Peru as we transition out of the Modoki El Nino to a basin wide event.

I use all the El Ninos since 1930 - close to 30 now. It's not that small. The weeklies have been over +0.5C for two months now, each week. The government declaring an El Nino is always a lagging indicator. The Jamstec news blurb has been calling this an El Nino Modoki for months, if you really want some kind of official statement, as if it matters. The SOI is going to be around -9 for the past 90 days too, which basically doesn't happen in non-El Ninos. http://www.jamstec.go.jp/aplinfo/sintexf/e/seasonal/outlook.html These are your drivers - ENSO forecast: As predicted earlier, the El Niño Modoki-like state is observed now. The SINTEX-F predicts the El Niño Modoki-like state will persist at least until early winter. We need to be careful of its impact, as it may be different from that of the canonical El Niño. Then, the model predicts that the tropical Pacific will return to a neutral-state from late winter through year 2020. Indian Ocean forecast: The positive Indian Ocean Dipole is now fully established reaching a level similar to that of the extremely strong events of 1994 and 1997. The model predicts that the positive Indian Ocean Dipole will persist in late autumn, and then decay in winter. We may observe co-occurrence of a positive Indian Ocean Dipole and an El Niño Modoki-like state in autumn and winter; this is as we observed in 1994 and 2018.

Yes. I keep saying it, in El Ninos, we're strongly negatively correlated. If I get to my seasonal total in an El Nino, it's very rare for the Boston to DC corridor to all hit theirs.

I'm up to eight inches now. Airport is about 0.40" that fell as snow, likely well over four inches now, maybe five or more already. Oct-May average is 9.6". Would be very hard to not have a snowier than average total in Albuquerque. This isn't really early for snow here, it's about an average date for first snow, just a lot.

I had 3.5" with the New Mexico storm by 10:50 pm on 11/27 in my backyard, about 10-miles due north of the airport site, at the same elevation. As of 1:30 am on 11/28, I'm up to 5.0". Airport in Albuquerque has had 0.19" fall as snow with temperatures between 28-32F the entire time. I think they're probably around 2.3" so far. The cold dry air has really held it's own so far. We went from 37F / 14F dew point to 32F / 25F dew point in an hour flat from 6 pm to 7 pm.

I've got 3.5" with the current storm over New Mexico as of 20 minutes ago at my place. Airport is around an inch, but the heaviest snow should come in over the next six hours. We're negatively correlated to snow in the coastal NE in El Nino years, and only average about 10". Obviously 3.5" isn't 10" - but the odds are 6/10 here for an above average Oct-May when November sees accumulating snow. Philadelphia correlation (r-squared) in 28 El Ninos through 2018-19 is close to 0.3 with El Nino snow in Albuquerque. Not as strong for Boston/NYC/Baltimore/DC, but it's not real weak either.

Definitely a real snow storm here - this is I-25 and Paseo Random Twitter pics -

Albuquerque went from around 40F with a 12F dew point at 2 pm, to about 31F with a 25F dew point at 7:30, thanks to the magic of evaporative cooling. Some accumulating snow already where I am, with the airport already seeing some too officially.

I went with 0-3" <5200 feet, 2-5" 5200-5600 feet, and 3-7" 5600-6100 feet in Albuquerque. It's a wet bulb storm for us in the city, we'll begin the day with temps in the low 20s or high teens (thanks for the cold dry air), before warming to the high 30s or low 40s, then the rain starts, but the sunsets, the dew point rises, but it cools the air as the moisture evaporates. Window for Albuquerque is likely 8 pm to 4 am for accumulating snow if you buy the 3-km NAM. Higher areas will start out earlier and last longer. But it's a 16 hour precip event before the next storm, and something lie 8-12 hours of it should be snow for the city. But, it is complicated here. I generally like this setup though, we had very low dew points in Feb 2015 at the surface, and then subtropical moisture moved on top of it. The subtropical warmth won, eventually, but first we had 6-12 in the city, 2/26-2/28. It's not super different from this setup.

My concern for later periods is the the Indian Ocean Dipole. Can't hang on as strong as it is for much longer. Near impossible to get sustained low pressure by Australia with it in place, and so the SOI keeps going bonkers, more than you'd expect from an El Nino this weak. Speaking of the SOI...another big 10 point drop. You know the drill. Watch for a big storm in the SW in ten days...and actually the GFS already has something in the vein of the current pattern: tropical input from the subtropical jet, coming in roughly the same time as a big low from the northern branch entering California. I'd have to look at the maps of 1992-93, but if this continues for any length of time in winter here, we've got a shot at record or near-precip this winter. These storms coming in have 0.50-1.00" precip each - huge for the interior SW.

For anyone curious, here is a list of the major Indian Ocean Dipole events in Sept-Nov for 1880-2004. This is built into my analog system when I look at the Pacific to some extent, although I don't give it much weight in winter, except as a tie-breaker. It's more important in Fall. Part of how I had 1994 last year. https://iri.columbia.edu/~blyon/REFERENCES/P38.pdf

I had some pretty big Novembers in Colorado in my analogs. 1992 has had some similarities in recent weeks, and has been a strong precip analog here since July - near identical monthly totals excepts in August when a thunderstorm missed our airport. Even blended in with some of the lesser years, there was a pretty good signal for snow for Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico in November this year. December will likely quiet down some for Colorado, but we'll see how that goes.

Weaker and more West based than last year, but certainly a Modoki El Nino at least for Fall (we seem to be transitioning to a basin-wide look though for actual winter). Japan uses 165E-140W, 10N-10S as their Nino 3.4 ("Box A") - that zone is definitely in an El Nino look. The waters by Peru are colder too. So more of a Modoki than last year. Will be curious to see if the +SOI the CFS continues to show for December has to do with the Indian Ocean Dipole flipping this month, hard to get the Australia part of the +SOI without that.

I went with 1-4", 2-5", 4-8" for Albuquerque by elevation Wed-Thu tentatively - but may change tomorrow. The models all have at least some kind of transition to snow in the city late, it's just how quickly, and how much moisture. European keeps showing 6-12" for the whole city, which I think is way too high for most. NAM has 1-4" which I think is probably too low for some areas. GFS is 0-1", with hardly any rain even.

We've fallen off the pace of last year, except in Nino 4. Still West-based overall, but the heat is getting to Nino 1.2 now. SOI 11/1-11/25 is about -10 - solidly El Nino by that measure. Also, the European has been showing 9.0 inches of snow for Albuquerque (last two runs) through Thanksgiving morning. Don't really buy it, but if I'm wrong, that's a season of snow, and that is correlated to lower snow in the NE US in El Ninos. Nino1+2 Nino3 Nino34 Nino4 Week SST SSTA SST SSTA SST SSTA SST SSTA 25SEP2019 20.0-0.5 24.8-0.1 27.2 0.5 29.7 1.1 02OCT2019 20.0-0.6 25.1 0.3 27.2 0.5 29.7 1.0 09OCT2019 19.7-1.0 24.8-0.1 27.1 0.4 29.5 0.9 16OCT2019 20.6-0.2 25.3 0.4 27.5 0.8 29.7 1.1 23OCT2019 19.7-1.3 25.0 0.1 27.3 0.6 29.7 1.0 30OCT2019 20.8-0.4 25.4 0.5 27.4 0.7 29.6 0.9 06NOV2019 20.7-0.6 25.2 0.3 27.2 0.5 29.3 0.7 13NOV2019 20.9-0.6 25.6 0.6 27.4 0.8 29.6 0.9 20NOV2019 21.7-0.1 25.6 0.6 27.4 0.7 29.5 1.0 26SEP2018 20.2-0.3 25.5 0.6 27.3 0.6 29.3 0.6 03OCT2018 21.3 0.7 25.6 0.7 27.4 0.7 29.5 0.8 10OCT2018 21.1 0.4 25.6 0.7 27.3 0.6 29.5 0.9 17OCT2018 21.1 0.3 25.9 1.0 27.6 0.9 29.6 0.9 24OCT2018 21.3 0.3 25.9 1.0 27.7 1.1 29.8 1.1 31OCT2018 21.4 0.2 25.9 0.9 27.8 1.2 29.8 1.1 07NOV2018 22.1 0.8 25.8 0.9 27.4 0.8 29.5 0.9 14NOV2018 22.2 0.6 25.8 0.8 27.4 0.7 29.5 0.9 21NOV2018 22.6 0.8 26.3 1.3 27.9 1.3 29.6 1.0

This is one of the widest spreads I've ever seen for Albuquerque within 84 hours - literally near 0 rain to near 10 inches of snow. I've been leaning toward a coating to three with some rain, but I'd like to see the European win.

This would be a good little storm for Albuquerque - 24 hours through Thanksgiving Morning.

Some re-development of the warmth below the surface, but that little cold area may make it up anyway. That's kind of what happened in 1992-93, which was very similar to this year in June-Sept at the surface, before a small cold area showed up Nino 3.4 at the surface in winter. Then, in early 1993, more warmth surfaced and El Nino returned.

I'd really like to see another 0.7"+ precipitation here by the end of the month. We haven't had a record wet-month for the 1931-now era in Albuquerque since September 2013 when 3.97" fell. The GFS and European are really struggling with the storms for NM & CO this week again. I think they'll start to have a unified message by Sunday Night though. Weather.com currently has a snowy Wednesday Night for Albuquerque, which would be a mess for travel. There are some striking similarities to the Fall pattern so far, both in the US and for global ocean patterns/oscillations. One thing that would really cement last year as a good analog is the CFS depiction of a positive SOI burst (La Nina) in December, at basically the same magnitude as last December. I don't think the once-in-a-century cold places like Billings experienced last February would necessary repeat, but you'd probably see another warm month in the SE US with cold displaced somewhere to the NW of that zone if the SOI verified at +10 in December. It'd be a huge change from November if nothing else, since we are running around -9 so far.