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2013-14 MA Winter Disco - 'cause it's never too early.


Bob Chill

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there is no chance...plus, not coincidentally, as you know those 6 winters were 3 ninos, 2 neutrals during a warm ENSO phase, and a weak nina after a massive extended warm phase

 

I wouldn't be so quick to rule everything out that doesn't jive with your opinion on the winter. You could just as well be wrong...like any other met. Just saying.

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No doubt I could be wrong, but I am confident we are going to have a mediocre to subpar winter....Will is just trying to give us some encouragement...The one wildcard and it is a longshot is if we get some surprise Nino....a weak nina, would also give us the potential for slightly better winter....but as it stands now, there is no real reason to be too optimistic...We have a neutral winter in a -PDO/Cold Enso phase...these are typically bad snow winters for DC

 

In terms of some optimism, a few decent analog winters have a cold month...Dec 1945, January 1957, December 1989, and even February 2013....but they all had more of a Nina imprint if not full blown

 

Something I am looking for is for us to get colder in 3.4 (at this point a Nino is kind of hopeless)....I think if we can get cold neutral/borderline nina, there would be legit reason to go cold in one of the months....and cold at least gives us some opportunities to back into something decent even without a southern stream....I think a dead on neutral or neutral positive would be a disaster here....

 

So rather than look for something good in the northern Pac (Pdo is raging negative right now) or Atlantic, I would look at region 3.4 and root for it to cool..

 

 

Probably something more realistic to hope for outside of the unlikely autumn PDO spike is a winter like '00-'01 or maybe a '71-'72 type winter...which had that great pattern in February. Both were weak Ninas and -PDO periods. '71-'72 was more entrenched in the decadal PDO regime than '00-'01, so hoping for a PAC like '00-'01 would be difficult. For some reason the PDO went up during the winter months that year despite solidly negative leading up to it. '56-'57 is one you already mentioned which might not be a bad analog either.

 

A terrifying analog for ENSO and PDO is '90-'91...even though it was in long term +PDO regime, it was hugely negative that autumn and winter and we were coming off a neutral ENSO ('89-'90) after a big Nina ('88-'89). I doubt that we would see an AO that severely positive though which was a big driver of that horrific winter. But some of those neutrals with -PDO have produced ugly AO regimes in the winter.

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That's a weathfella question sir

it might be too early for that anyway. unless it's going to be a really epic winter.

 

my prediction is for darkening and coldening in coming months.

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I've posted this before in some thread..so I am not being a debbie downer just to be one...There is justification for not being optimistic...I am easily pleased in winter, but I know many aren't..

 

Here are our 20"+ winters since 1950

 

57-58 - Nino

59-60 - Neutral after 2-year nino

60-61 - Neutral after 3 year warm/neutral ENSO

62-63 - Neutral after 6 year nino/neutral phase

63-64 - Nino

65-66 - Nino

66-67 - Neutral after nino

67-68 - neutral after 3 year warm/neutral enso

77-78 - Nino

78-79 - Neutral after 2-year Nino

79-80 - neutral after 4 year warm/neutral phase

81-82 - neutral after 6 year warm/neutral phase

82-83 - Nino

86-87 - Nino

87-88 - Nino

95-96 - weak nina after 7 year warm/neutral phase

02-03 - Nino

09-10 - Nino

 

so far the only argument I have seen for an above climo winter is that I could be wrong, winter is hard to predict, fluke etc....and I absolutely could be wrong....but the evidence is overwhelming against an above climo winter

 

It does look kind of bleak for we guys in the I95 DC crowd. 

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I've posted this before in some thread..so I am not being a debbie downer just to be one...There is justification for not being optimistic...I am easily pleased in winter, but I know many aren't..

Here are our 20"+ winters since 1950

57-58 - Nino

59-60 - Neutral after 2-year nino

60-61 - Neutral after 3 year warm/neutral ENSO

62-63 - Neutral after 6 year nino/neutral phase

63-64 - Nino

65-66 - Nino

66-67 - Neutral after nino

67-68 - neutral after 3 year warm/neutral enso

77-78 - Nino

78-79 - Neutral after 2-year Nino

79-80 - neutral after 4 year warm/neutral phase

81-82 - neutral after 6 year warm/neutral phase

82-83 - Nino

86-87 - Nino

87-88 - Nino

95-96 - weak nina after 7 year warm/neutral phase

02-03 - Nino

09-10 - Nino

so far the only argument I have seen for an above climo winter is that I could be wrong, winter is hard to predict, fluke etc....and I absolutely could be wrong....but the evidence is overwhelming against an above climo winter

Matt, I was reading somewhere (and now cannot remember where) that this current run of enso conditions is a bit unprecedented in the records going back to 1950, and, iirc, they mentioned a closest match being somewhere in the early 50's (maybe late 40's ?). I just can't remember where I saw this. But the latest CPC discussion mentions this as being a time of higher uncertainty. I wonder, given your own statement about their not really being a good historical match, if this winter gives a result that isn't exactly what we might expect. Of course, that still wouldn't mean good.

When I look at the history, it is indeed difficult to find a good match. Looking at the period of 1954-1960, we had 3 cons. Nina's followed by a niño followed by a long period of neutral but mostly cold neutral. Looking at the Winchester data starting in the third year after the one niño we had a run of really good snowfall winters.

I'm sure there are other factors in play that you can point out that I'm not aware of, but at least Enso wise it's slightly similar.

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Those are some pretty compelling stats for DCA >20" snowfalls.

 

But that goes back to how we've said their big winters are totally stacked with El Ninos...but even the neutrals are following Ninos for the most part.

 

 

This year's ENSO analog is a bit strange though...we're coming off a neutral winter but I'm not sure we have a winter like that in our relatively short 60 year sample of good data. It started off as El Nino in late summer and early autumn but then fizzled rapidly and we basically had La Nina conditions by mid winter in the ENSO region. So it was kind of an "extreme neutral"...tale of two phases cancelling eachother out.

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