Stormchaserchuck1

The problem with the NAO is it's partially calculated over our area. It's pressure difference between higher latitude and the mid-latitudes, so when we have colder weather/trough, it's coinciding with more -nao. That's part of the reason why it's been so positive for the last 10+ years.. we have been in a mid-latitude warm pattern. H5 over Greenland is a better way to measure an independent index. That's what I wish the CPC would do, since they have correlation composite maps based on index state - the last few Winter's we have seen some good Greenland blocking, that has been very close to +NAO, because the SE ridge was occurring at the same time. I would say the problem is the Pacific Ocean. A theory is that the Solar Min 2004-2022 creates more High pressure out there from La Nina conditions, and the major solar spike, giving us 8 Greenland trough periods so far in 2024 (when it was 3 such events in the last 4 years), may be the start of an overall pattern change..

A lot of GFS ensembles have a storm developing in the Caribbean in 5-7 days. It's a real nice SE Canada 500mb High pressure occurring at this time, which favors Gulf of Mexico/Florida hits.

Some more pictures from last night.. this was maybe 5 minutes after it was the brightest

News stations definitely would have reported Aura's several decades ago.

No! It seems like people keep making this point about awareness being greater only recently. Record keeping was very good when I was growing up in the 1990s, and well before in the 1970s-80s. We have had access to satellites that are used very much by the public for a long time.

That's what I was saying.. I was taught in college classes that it could never happen. Apparently 2003 was much stronger (?) and it only made it to Canada. Something tells me this one is stronger..

Good question. I'm paying extra attention to weather patterns this year. So far the difference is +NAO. We have had 8 +NAO periods this year, when it was a total of 3 in the last 4 years. There was stuff published on this relationship prior to this year.. My intuition says more High pressure.

Definitely getting +NAO again, X amount of time after northern lights. This 2024 +NAO is definitely a new pattern in the mix.. I thought late Sept/early Oct -NAO was predictable because it has had opposite correlations with the rest of the year, and seems to also be slightly related to -pdo. Made a post here in August I think..

Here's one with the moon to the south.. my sister in Baltimore city (about 30 minutes south) said that she couldn't see them. I was just far enough north, but could see the waves moving south while they were dimming somewhat

Some photos That was even 5 minutes after they were the brightest!

I had pink northern lights visible with the naked eye! About 20 minutes ago, I thought it was the sun setting, then stepped outside and realized there were no clouds! They have dimmed now, but it encompasses the whole sky where before it was only visible to the north. Must be cool to see it from an airplane

My Winter forecast

I do think that we will have some -EPO/+PNA periods, most likely in December-January but they likely won't last more than 10 days. The overall mean I think will be pretty above average, and we will have some very warm days on the East Coast this Winter, ahead of storms cutting up through the Midwest, Tenn/Ohio Valley and Great Lakes. February is the strongest month I have right now for warmer than average.

I'm warmer than the CPC. Here's the CPC's Winter forecast

I have, over the years, developed a few tools that work with pretty high accuracy regarding the following Winter. First, where is the money and what is the "middle" of what people -- insurance companies, energy companies, etc., are predicting. Natural Gas Futures Last year, the Natural Gas price in the Fall was extremely low, especially compared to Crude Oil/Gasoline, and this was a better predictor than seasonal models, which generally had a trough on the East Coast, US, from an expected El Nino pattern. Current Natural Gas price is $2.64. Here is a chart going back to 1998, highlighting the highest (blue) vs lowest (red) prices. Higher Natural Gas price should be linked to colder weather in the eastern US, and Europe. and Lower Natural Gas price should be linked to warmer weather in the eastern US, and Europe. Here are the Highest Natural Gas years (blue): Here are the lower Natural Gas price years (red): For October, here is where we rank: 1. 1998: $2.27 2. 2015: $2.3 3. 2019: $2.63 4. 2024: $2.64 5. 2023: $2.91 6. 1999: $2.95 26: 2006: $7.53 27: 2007: $8.33 28: 2004: $8.72 29: 2005: $12.2 Furthermore, because of inflation, the Crude Oil or Gasoline vs Natural Gas spread is a better gauge for relative value. We are currently #2 in this metric [since 1998], behind only last year (23-24). ENSO I manually plotted all ENSO variables (200mb wind, 850mb wind, OLR, SSTs, SOI, pressure, MEI, etc.), and I found that the most correlated ENSO measurement to the North Pacific [PNA] pattern, is ENSO subsurface. This works at +0-time. Because of this, I use the subsurface primarily to determine what the ENSO state is, and is going to be for the Winter. Obviously, in the future, it could change, but right now we are completely Neutral. For most of the year so far, we have been in a "La Nina" in the subsurface: This has correlated with a -PNA pattern Now that the subsurface has neutralized, the PNA is not correlating so highly NAO In 2005, I found that the N. Atlantic SSTs in a region from New Foundland to Greenland from May-Sept has a high correlation to the following Winter's NAO. The correlation was almost 0.5 (or 75% of getting the sign right). I made a manual index of the region, and have followed its predictions every year since 2005. I estimated that this NAO predictor index has a 0.54SD at getting the Dec-March NAO correctly (+1.00 index is 50% odds of +0.46 to +1.54 DFJM NAO). In real time, that method has been 9-9 on the 0.54 SD since Inception, and it has gotten the phase correctly 13-5. That is real future time forecasting results. Here is what the index encompasses: I weight the index as follows: It's been working out great in real-time. This year, the index comes out at: Top area: ~0.0 (x1.00) Bottom area: ~+0.8 (x0.65) Total: +0.52 +0.52 NAO predictor for Dec-Jan-Feb-Mar. That means there is a 50% chance the DJFM NAO will be -0.02 to +1.06 (using 0.54 standard deviation) That gives a 74% chance of the Winter DJFM NAO being Positive overall. PDO I have been burned on the PDO! I do not think SSTs lead, I think they are more secondary to atmospheric conditions. But the last 4 years, and actually the last 30 years, the PDO has performed admirably. The mathematical odds are something like 1/100 for random to hit as much as the PDO has over this time. Because of that, I will give it some credence. CURRENT PDO IS NEAR -3. That is 2nd on record for October, going back to the early 1900s. Only 1955 had a lower October PDO. Here is what PDO correlation looks like in the Winter (map default is the "+" phase, you have to flip it around to get a negative PDO correlation). Rolled-forward North American Temps December 2023 to August 2024 was the warmest on record for the CONUS, due mostly to +EPO pattern. I made an analog list of 30 matching analogs (75 total years in dataset.. 30 analogs is 40%) and I got a really strong signal the following Nov-March. When you have 40% of the dataset used, you'd expect the anomalies to come out at +1F, but what I found was a much stronger signal than that: Dec-June analogs: Following Winter (40% of dataset!): Mexican Heat Wave in May Mexico crushed records in May. I found that similar analogs rolled above average temperatures to the eastern 1/2 of the CONUS for the following Sept-March. Phoenix Heat Wave It's the warmest Sept 25 - Oct 13 in Phoenix all time. I think they broke their 2-week record by more than +7F! I came up with 20 + analogs and found this for the following Winter rolled-forward: Wintertime 10mb QBO correlates with the Winter time 10mb state. When coupled with ENSO, its correlation is very strong. Going back to all records available, the correlation is 75% that +QBO/La Nina leads to a negative Wintertime 10mb in the Northern Hemisphere. 75% that -QBO/El Nino leads to a positive Wintertime 10mb in the Northern Hemisphere. The QBO is currently +10 and rising. It will likely peak in the Winter. >10 events for the QBO are a strong phase. With La Nina tendencies occurring, although I'm not necessarily predicting a La Nina, I think the odds favor a cold 10mb N. Hemisphere vortex by about 2/3 or 67%. Cold 10mb is correlated to +AO conditions in the Wintertime. There are other things I have considered, that I may talk about later but here is my Winter forecast: Winter Forecast Temps: Precip: I'd put my confidence as follows: vs 10-year average: 65% vs 30-year average: 75-80% vs 50 year average: 80-85%

October 10mb warming actually correlates with a -NAO in December When the Southern Hemisphere had a -4 to -5 AAO in late July/early August, that also had about a 0.3 correlation to -NAO in December. Maybe the potential energy will give us a more favorable Pacific in Dec (my theory).

Wilma is the most beautiful pinhole eye I've ever seen.. dropped down to 882mb.

Ravens fans on here are so negative. How about that Lamar is having another MVP type season. Has thrown 1 INT in 5 games, with a thrower rating of >100. And before this game he was the 9th leading rusher in the NFL. That scramble to Likely for a TD was amazing! Stoney Case, Chris Redman, Tony Banks, Kyle Boller.. remember those days?

I think we are still in a sweet spot if we get a favorable pattern.. maybe not the NAO, but on the Pacific side. Global precipitable water has been way up. There was a spot in Louisiana that broke their record by almost 200% in the Spring. And the rains with Helene were more anomalous than usual too. Last year globally was a good +20% over all satellite data since 1948. I think people are rushing the "post 15-16 Super El Nino" climate change. Maybe what we be typical 40-50 years from now, they are calling the last 9 years. The fact is, we have to figure out why strong El Nino's are reversing so much thereafter. 1:8 is the current ratio after 15-16 (-PNA), and it was always historically ~1:3 (meaning 3 la nina's per 1 strong nino). I want to know why a Strong El Nino could lead to 9 years of strong -PNA. Maybe it's just a coincidence or the strong ENSO event is just a blip in an otherwise strong background state? Once the Pacific becomes more favorable, the higher precip tendency should give us some above average snowfall years, for sure..

Earlier in September we had some pretty good negative subsurface.. most recent shows complete neutral.. largest anomaly deviation is actually positive below Nino 1+2

Coupled with a La Nina, that's a negative 10mb signal for the Winter. With Solar Max occurring, and my N. Atlantic SST index coming in about +0.50 for DJFM, it's looking probably about 75% probable that this will be a +NAO Winter (DJFM).

The problem is that the PDO is around -3 right now. A lot of those colder La Nina's happened with a less negative or positive PDO. For the last 4 years, I have seen how the state of this index has ruled everything when it come to Winter weather. There is still some hope that something like 13-14 can evolve, but usually the cold Winter pattern starts showing itself in October, and the Pacific H5 is warm right now (matching the -PDO perfectly).

lol yeah, the point is though that index driven patterns roll forward. I'm sure global warming begets more warm, but that I have a +4F anomalies in some cases, with over 40% of the dataset being used is a pretty strong index-rolled forward signal. +EPO and +NAO are cold weather anomalies, so there is something of a balancing act to the referenced.

I'll be more sensitive to your plight. I didn't mean to criticize saying that ACE doesn't really matter for the Winter.. just meant to turn it into a logical meteorological discussion. Some things are so simply explained, and we want each other to have better forecasts. You posted that this Aug had the +NAO record and some other things... I wouldn't have known that had you not posted it here. It's mostly good stuff, we're all discussing to make one another better in the realm of science. Whether the WPO is positive or not really means little, I'm actually surprised that it rolls forward to a cooler Dec and Jan in the Midwest and East. You intuitively made that "flip" connection here in the past.. Your intuitions from local observations are mostly good.. I generally agree that it's a global system occurring that can be sensed very individually.