After the last half decade, even a perfect pattern on paper becomes “proceed with caution” in reality. I do think it’s important that the look we’re seeing is fundamentally different from the ones we’ve seen in recent years with troughs getting buried on the west coast. Having a much more favorable Pacific gives me some cautious hope that a blowtorch completely-close-the-shades pattern from Dec-March is less likely.
We need to produce in our windows, absolutely. But we also need to remember climo at least down here in the tropics of CT remains essentially hostile until about mid-month. Getting on the board and not reverting to the annual blowtorch as we move into Christmas week (or having it on the horizon) is a win imo.