I hear you...and I appreciate your last few posts and the time/effort you put into the research. I dont disagree with anything you said and the Pac ridge is a dagger without help elsewhere but from my perspective it comes as no surprise if the MJO is going right into the warm phases. Not that I saw that happening...I actually thought we had a good chance at cold phases for Jan. I understand the MJO is not the be all and end all but the Pac is responding just as it did last year to the unfavorable tropical forcing.
So, with that said the only thing I might have an issue with is describing the upcoming pattern as a base state....seems like this year has no base state, imo. The silver lining here is that I think we are primed for a rapid response if we can get into the cold phases...as you noted, with the low solar, fav QBO and already seeing bouts of HLB this season. With the warm phases hopefully doing their work to disrupt the PV I think we could see that Pac ridge move east around week 3/4. Going to be a rough couple of weeks...or more. But nothing new to a MA snow lover.