GaWx

This year’s El Niño will very likely become a strong event. Yet another series of strong westerly wind bursts over the central Pacific will trigger a new downwelling Kelvin wave that further suppresses the thermocline in the East Pacific a few months now. https://x.com/webberweather/status/2028468392550924638?

The winter of 2025-6 had only 18 of its 90 days with a WPO >0. That’s the lowest # of days since the very cold winter of 1962-3, which had only 11 (lowest number of any since 1948-9). 1956-7 had only 16. So, 2025-6 had the 3rd lowest. I think 1967-8 is in 4th with 21 of its 91 days >0: https://downloads.psl.noaa.gov/Public/map/teleconnections/wpo.reanalysis.t10trunc.1948-present.txt

Thanks, Charlie. Don’t forget to consider a “relative” RONIlike adjustment downward. That could be ~-0.3C.

Hey Mitch, thanks for doing that. You could go ahead and delete this post if you’d like.

Hey DB, To be efficient, I’ll look at one city, Tulsa, as a good rep of the S Plains. They actually had a NN precip fall. But winter has been dry with only 1.62” vs 5.65” 30 year normal. This was the driest winter there since 2005-6’s 1.59” and second driest on record! Records go back to 1893-4. 1931-2 winter there was wet with 7.7”. Also, Nov of 1931 is the 2nd wettest Nov on record. So, winter of 31-2 didn’t at all foretell the upcoming dust bowl. Then again, 1932 overall ended up dry overall with a very dry Feb-May and Aug-Sep. Also, 1934 and 36 were dry while 1939 was the 6th driest on record. https://www.weather.gov/wrh/Climate?wfo=tsa

The E coast is due for a cold April as the last 3 have actually been mild.

The current drought throughout the SE US is serious business! In my area, for example, the last 6 months’ 9.38” were in the aggregate at KSAV the driest Sept-Feb since way back in 1931-2 (though 1931-2 was much drier) and were <50% of the 1991-2020 avg of 19.74”!Driest Sept-Feb KSAV on record:6.52” 1931-2 6.64” 1917-8 7.78” 1901-29.04” 1906-79.06” 1889-909.38” 2025-69.44” 2001-29.55” 1940-119.74” 30 yr avg

Hey suzook, I don’t know if you’ve seen it but latest FFC has only ~68 in your area and only ~62 closer in to ATL due to their stronger wedged E winds for Mon’s highs. CHS has us here similar to your 68 with brisk NE winds from the wedge. But indeed, this with lots of sunshine is still a far cry from the 40s cloudy/cold rain highs in NC.

Thanks, Mitch. This thread is the perfect place. Although we have to take this new CANSIPS run with a huge grain as @snowman19correctly reminded us, it is at least encouraging from my perspective for two reasons: -decent chance at a much lower hurricane season ACE vs recent years in 2026 -next winter’s E US cold potential Regarding next winter, this run for Jan 2027 is colder in practically the entire lower 48 vs the run from one year ago for Jan of 2026: Current 2m run for Jan ‘27…N America has the largest and most intense area of BN on globe (and vs 1981-2010 to boot) and is slightly colder than last month’s run: One year ago’s 2m run for Jan of ‘26…sig. warmer than new run for Jan ‘27:

The NOAA Feb NAO will likely come in between +0.35 and +0.60. That would easily be high enough to give us still another winter without low sunspots/not near a solar minimum without a sub -0.25 NAO as I’m projecting -0.13 to -0.20, which I’d classify as neutral. My def. of neutral is between -0.25 and +0.25. It was headed to sub -0.25 as it was ~-0.45 winter to date as of Feb 14th, but the strong +NAO of the 2nd half of Feb raised the average. So although this was the closest call to finally stopping the non-negative NAO non-low sunspot combo streak, it appears we’ll still be able to say that the only -NAO winters since 1980 (only 6 of them) have been during sub 30 sunspot averaged winters.

EWs: 1. ~100% chance for SSWE Mar 4th 2. Last 2 runs: Week 6, Apr 6-12, is coldest week in absolutes! Not easy to do in spring!

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AAM says here comes El Niño!

Today’s EW is back down to -5 for the low of the 10 mb mean wind (2nd lowest to the run of 3 days ago that had -11) and it has 100% reversing (same as run of 3 days ago) though the run still shows no sign of notable longlasting cold before April (only subtle hint for Apr 6-12 in Midwest/NE): note that I don’t base these posts on the bogus too cold especially late portion of WB extended EPS, which practically every run go to BN in most of the E US late and Rockies most of run; if one goes by those, they’ll always be thinking cold in the E US by late in the runs….ridiculous; unfortunately these too cold maps influence some pro mets @donsutherland1is aware of this problem More on the WB cold bias issue: Today’s April 6-12 from ecmwf: a few areas 1-2F BN and that’s the coldest! This is what I mean by just subtle hints of cold: Today’s April 6-12 from WB: the west is absolutely laughable and east is also significantly too cold! And note that this climo (1991-2020) is colder climo than ecmwf, which uses just the last 20 years meaning that alone should make the WB maps a little warmer rather than significantly colder than the in-house maps!

Wow! In terms of light freezes, KSAV has had them as late as April 16th! But that 32 was way back during a colder era, 1962. However, we’ve much more recently in early April had 2 light freezes in 2007 and even a 32 on April 3rd just 5 years ago!