GaWx

Thanks for that info. It seems that this has been a really bad year for Hawaii! When was the last season as bad as this? And the season is far from over! -H Lala: extreme rainfall -TS Moke: additional heavy rains along with gusty winds only a week after Lala thus hampering recovery efforts -H Lowell: lots of damage from sustained TS force/gusts to H force W islands, significant storm surge, and very high waves

I’ve been following this closely. CFSv2 has dropped RONI peak from +3.5 to +3.0 over last month or so due to August pause. That’s just a pause though and notable 3.4 warming has finally resumed. But I don’t see it catching back up. Thus, I’m currently at +3.0 for my educated guess. The BoM is way up at +3.6 and will likely bust too high like it did in ‘23. However, its SST anomalies are based on a dataset that’s ~0.3 to 0.4 warmer than ERSST, which NOAA uses, and which just adds confusion. Keep in mind that 1+2 has recently been strong thus making it the most E based on record for early Sept. beating 1997.

In my two Maroon Bells posts above where I mentioned elevations, I meant I was hiking at 9.5-9.7K ft, not 11.5-11.7K feet lmao. Sorry for the typo! I came back to warm/humid GA last week. I hope to return next summer! The change hit me like a ton of wet hot bricks! @mayjawintastawm@Chinook@ValpoVike

July ‘26 ERSSTv6 relative 3.4 was +1.333 per this: https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/indices/Rnino34.ascii.txt Do you have a link to the monthly GAMSSA data? Using the image below, the July ‘26 relative 3.4 BoM is ~+1.7 meaning a difference of ~0.37 between it and ERSSTv6:

Thanks, Mitch. That means the WCS PDO has risen ~0.92 over just the last 9 reporting days, and that’s the highest daily WCS PDO since way back on June 30th:

This is what I predicted on 8/24/26 for monthly/trimonthly RONI peaks (+3.0/+2.8), which would still be record warm peaks. I’m sticking with these for now. Let’s see what happens. I’ll use NOAA for verification, of course: “I’m now predicting that the actual monthly RONI peak (in or near Nov) will only be ~+3.0 with a trimonthly peak only ~+2.8. That +2.8 trimonthly would still be a record warm RONI going back to 1950 beating 1982’s +2.4. So, it would still be historic for sure. But it wouldn’t be nearly as warm as the ~+3.3-3.5 trimonthly RONI peak of many runs of various models.”

I said in my post that EVERY month since April verified significantly too warm. That’s five months in a row, not just August. I pointed out Aug because your two maps showed how much Aug had to be revised down. But April, May, June, and July also had to be similarly revised significantly down. Like for Aug, I’m talking about when each was the then current month. In other words, these were very poor forecasts considering they were then the first month. I’ve got all of the maps saved and can post them if necessary.

In Sept of 2023, the UKMET did much better than the way too warm BoM and was about the best of all models. Sept ‘23 UKMET progged ONI peak ~+2.0, which verified almost perfectly: I’ll be anxiously awaiting the Sept ‘26 UKMET ONI peak forecast. Here’s August of ‘26: ~+3.0. Keep in mind that this is ONI, not RONI! https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/seasonal-to-decadal/gpc-outlooks/el-nino-la-nina

Yep, the BoM monthly relative peak actually rose ~0.1 over the last month to ~+3.7, very much unlike the drop of 0.5 of the CFSv2 RONI trimonthly peak. Also, it unlike most others keeps it almost that high in Dec. I expect BoM will bust significantly too warm for this progged relative monthly peak of +3.7 like it did in 2023, when it was the warmest and verified way too warm. Also, note that every month since April on the BoM has busted significantly too warm. One can even see that for Aug by comparing your two graphs: the Aug 8th run had Aug way up at +2.7. The Sep 5th run lowered it down to +2.35. (I believe that the BoM uses a different dataset anomaly that makes it warmer than NOAA as you probably realize. I think it uses the warmer CRW as a base at least to an extent. That only adds to confusion.) The BoM (AUS-Access) had a whopping +2.9 for its peak forecast in its Sept ‘23 run! NDJ verified 0.9 too warm and DJF verified 1.1 too warm vs the NOAA ONI table seen at the link at the bottom of this post: https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso/oni/v6/

The MEI v2 was just released for JA: +2.5 vs +2.4 for JJ. That’s the 2nd bimonthly in a row at a record high for the bimonth (back to 1979). The record high for any bimonth is +2.9. Here’s the rundown for JAs of +0.5+: 2026: +2.5 1997: +2.3 2015: +2.0 1982: +1.9 1987: +1.5 2002: +1.0 1986: +1.0 1994: +0.9 2004: +0.8 2009: +0.6 2006: +0.6 1993: +0.6 2023: +0.5 2018: +0.5 1979: +0.5

The ONI peak in OND fell by the same 0.5 over the same period: Aug 1-10: ONI peak +4.15 Aug 30-Sep 8: ONI peak +3.65 and likely to fall further just like RONI as per the location of the blue lines So, the difference between the peaks of ONI and RONI didn’t widen.

I know ‘26 became the most E based of any Nino on record in early Sep as I posted that here 2 days ago: Although 1+2 has warmed in Sep, it like RONI has also fallen in OND fwiw though by not as much (0.3 vs 0.5) making it slightly more E based in OND than it had before: Aug 9-18: 1+2 OND +4.2 Aug 19-28: 1+2 OND +4.0 Aug 29-Sep 7: 1+2 OND +3.9

Heavy showers have moved from offshore W to my home at 1:40AM, a total surprise! Edit 11:45AM: Follow-up: I’ve been getting more showers moving W from offshore on and off since ~10AM to add to what I got late last night. I’ll check later to see if all of this added up to all that much. Edit #2: Heavy showers moved W from offshore to my home at 2:25PM. Edit #3; More showers moving in at 5:10PM. I’m at ~0.35” for all of 9/9 as of 8PM.

The CFSv2 progged RONI peak continues to drop steadily with more drops likely: 7/22-31: ASO/OND +3.5 8/9-18: OND +3.45 8/19-28: OND +3.2 8/29-9/7: OND +3.0 with most of the blue lines (most recent 8 runs) lower

Here’s the preliminary winter outlook from pro met. Chris Martz: here is my preliminary thinking. . . As y'all probably know by now because of the endless hysteria in the news cycle, we are in an El Niño, which is just the warm phase of the larger El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO). This year, the developing El Niño is unusually intense, and it is expected to officially be a “very strong” El Niño by early winter at the latest. This is marked by very warm sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. The news media and the United Nations have spun this as some sort of crazy event that will “turbocharge” extreme weather all over the globe, but that's not really how it works. Now, normally in the tropical Pacific Ocean, easterly wind stress associated with the Walker Circulation imparted on the sea surface acts to pile warm water near the surface in the western half of the basin; that is, closer to Asia. This pushes the thermocline down towards the west as warm water pools up north of the Maritime Continent and east of the Philippines. But during El Niño, the easterlies weaken or temporarily reverse (westerly wind bursts), which causes that pool of warm water to slosh back east. That's what's happening right now. There are a lot of meteorological factors to consider when it comes to predicting long-range temperatures, precipitation, and storm tracks. But this year, this “very strong” El Niño will play a dominant role I think as it has in years past (e.g., 1982–83, 1997–98, and 2015–16). Those are my top post-1950 analogs, and I added 1972–73 into the mix as it behaved similarly to the others, although it was only a “strong” El Niño at peak intensity. 1827–28 and 1877–78 would have been good analogs too, but we don't have enough climate data from back then to work with. A key feature of “very strong” El Niño events is that wintertime temperatures are particularly mild relative to average. This is pronounced in the Upper Plains / Midwest and Great Lakes / Northeast. Temperatures across the Desert Southwest and Four Corners region, however, typically run below average. The southeast can swing either way, but generally winds up near “average” (and I use scare quotes there because the weather is rarely “average”). However, these exceptionally mild temperatures do not necessarily persist all winter. In fact, most of this composite is due to “blowtorch” Decembers. And I do expect December to end up 5–10°F above average in the areas you see orange and red contours in the first analog composite map I made below. But the roaring Pacific Jet typically relaxes from mid-January through mid-February, so temperatures will tumble a bit closer to “seasonable.” If this El Niño were weaker, there'd be a good chance of a frigid December in the east. But I doubt that's going to happen. As far as precipitation goes, well, there should be an active subtropical jet stream. So, air parcels moving from west-to-east will tap into Gulf moisture and then be advected northward into the southeast. I expect a lot of rain in the Gulf Coast states (Texas to Florida) and then northward up the east coast into the DMV. Similarly, the western U.S. should expect some major drought relief due to atmospheric river events. After a near-record low snowpack last winter, the ski resorts will be back in business. Elsewhere, it will likely be a bit drier than normal due to persistent high-pressure ridging over the northern flank of the country. Storm tracks are going to favor the southern states. With respect to snowfall, overall, I do expect less of it nationwide outside of high elevation areas simply due to higher-than-average temperatures. But I cannot rule out ONE crippling blizzard in the Mid-Atlantic or in the southeast. It happened in the southeast (Florida, Georgia, and Carolina coastline) in February 1973 and in the lower Mid-Atlantic (Virginia, D.C., Maryland, and southeastern Pennsylvania) in both February 1983 and January 2016. However, it did not happen in 1827–28 or 1877–78 (I checked NOAA NCEI FORT data) or in 1997–98. So, whether or not we get the “big one” remains up in the air for now. But it will be that one storm that will ultimately determine where the seasonal snowfall will stand (above / below climatology) in the southeast and Mid-Atlantic. If it occurs, many folks will get their seasonal spoonful of snow in one dumping. If it does not occur, it's just going to be a wet winter.