Winter 2015-2016 speculation and discussion

[Ian]

09 analog seems to be in trouble.

 

[Sparky]

I can just feel the heat off that ocean.

[eurojosh]

What is it called when the entire planet's oceans north of 40S are above normal?  El grande nino? 

 

el abuelo?

[Ian]

I was kinda surprised at how strong it looked when I checked noaa site yesterday. PDO has improved since the beginning of Dec. It has relaxed quite a bit this fall but seems to be going back in the right direction. 

 

Kinda figured the early calls of its demise were premature. Some people still trying to belittle this event. It's uber. 

[WxUSAF]

Money. 

 

[Bob Chill]

Money.

It's skewed by some big pastings but overall the 12z members had more snow in the area than any run this year. But still only a dozen or so. The window looks OK though. Just need a shortwave to run under us before we lose the cold and it looks active for sure.

[mitchnick]

There's been some discussion about an impending warm November and the weenie angst that goes along with above normal temps during winter/near winter months. Well, weenies relax, as history says a warm November is exactly what we want this year.

The NINO being the number 1 factor this winter, I decided to look at snowfall in NINO winter's with cold vs. warm Novembers. However, I limited my research (if you want to call it that lol) to only moderate and strong NINOs. I had to cut it off somewhere and since this winter is hands-down strong(+?), I did not include weak or borderline weal/moderate winters. Therefore, winters that peak with +1.0C or less were excluded. That left me with 9 winters (excluding this year) since 1950. Then I compared the average monthly November temp at BWI of 46.5 degree each year, and that season's snowfall to BWI's average of 20.1". It gave me the list below.

WINTER 3.4 PEAK NOV. TEMP SNOWFALL

57/58 +1.7C 47.2 43.0"

63/64 +1.2C 47.3 51.8"

65/66 +1.8C 45.6 32.8"

72/73 +2.0C 43.2 1.2"

82/83 +2.1C 48.4 35.6"

87/88 +1.6C 47.8 20.4"

91/92 +1.6C 45.8 4.1"

97/98 +2.3C 43.7 3.2"

02/03 +1.3C 44.4 58.1"

09/10 +1.3C 49.7 77.0"

I have bolded all the Novembers with AN temps, and what do we have? Above normal snow EVERY YEAR. Now, the other mod/strong NINO winters all had below normal November temps and some were great and others our well known epic fails. So, what the numbers say is that you don't have to have an above normal November to have above normal snows in a mod/strong NINO. But if you do, you (BWI) get above normal snows. It is obviously a limited number of years, but I do find it encouraging that it works all the way back to 1957, and we've had a few regime changes over those almost 60 years. So Global Warmer and AvantHiatus, bring on the November heat!

I did not check to see if it works at DCA. If not every year, then almost all should work is my gut.

P.S. Links where I obtained my numbers

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml

http://www.weather.gov/media/lwx/climate/bwitemps.pdf

http://www.weather.gov/media/lwx/climate/bwisnow.pdf

     Well, after a well above normal November as long range modeling was predicting at the end of October and an historically warm December, the combination of a NINO of 1.1C+ or warmer plus a warm November resulted in another above normal snow for BWI and surrounding locations to include PHL, DCA, and IAD. I looked back further and it worked every time back to 1900 with one possible exception. I say possible because the exact ENSO numbers were unknown, but the total snow was like 17.7" at BWI. Frankly, I forgot the year because I did it months ago, but suffice to say, it was close enough to make the combo virtually guaranteed.

    I wish HM was around here because he would probably know why it works. My guess is something AO related, but that's a wag.

[EastCoast NPZ]

     Well, after a well above normal November as long range modeling was predicting at the end of October and an historically warm December, the combination of a NINO of 1.1C+ or warmer plus a warm November resulted in another above normal snow for BWI and surrounding locations to include PHL, DCA, and IAD. I looked back further and it worked every time back to 1900 with one possible exception. I say possible because the exact ENSO numbers were unknown, but the total snow was like 17.7" at BWI. Frankly, I forgot the year because I did it months ago, but suffice to say, it was close enough to make the combo virtually guaranteed.

    I wish HM was around here because he would probably know why it works. My guess is something AO related, but that's a wag.

 

That's a really interesting correlation, Mitch.  Neat stuff.

[WinterWxLuvr]

     Well, after a well above normal November as long range modeling was predicting at the end of October and an historically warm December, the combination of a NINO of 1.1C+ or warmer plus a warm November resulted in another above normal snow for BWI and surrounding locations to include PHL, DCA, and IAD. I looked back further and it worked every time back to 1900 with one possible exception. I say possible because the exact ENSO numbers were unknown, but the total snow was like 17.7" at BWI. Frankly, I forgot the year because I did it months ago, but suffice to say, it was close enough to make the combo virtually guaranteed.

    I wish HM was around here because he would probably know why it works. My guess is something AO related, but that's a wag.

 

Be interesting to see HOW those other years arrived at their above normal totals.  I think we got damn lucky this year to get what we did.

[Bob Chill]

Be interesting to see HOW those other years arrived at their above normal totals.  I think we got damn lucky this year to get what we did.

 

We got lucky in the sense that we hit a home run during the only really solid storm pattern we had. But it wasn't a fluke. It was a pretty classic Archambault event. On the flip side we got pretty unlucky during the decent but imperfect patterns. Luck is always a prime ingredient at our latitude though. We blew through a sh!tpile of luck during 13/14 - 14/15. Probably mortgaged future luck with that run

[Fozz]

We got lucky in the sense that we hit a home run during the only really solid storm pattern we had. But it wasn't a fluke. It was a pretty classic Archambault event. On the flip side we got pretty unlucky during the decent but imperfect patterns. Luck is always a prime ingredient at our latitude though. We blew through a sh!tpile of luck during 13/14 - 14/15. Probably mortgaged future luck with that run

 

or made up for the 3 winters preceding 13-14... we had lots of awful luck in those years.

[mitchnick]

Be interesting to see HOW those other years arrived at their above normal totals.  I think we got damn lucky this year to get what we did.

A quick glance shows that most of them had decent snows in December and again in February. I guess the closest match to this year would be 82/83, since they both had a monster that delivered the bulk of the season's snowfall. The differences between this season and 82/83, though, being obvious in that this year we had our big event at the end of Jan. vs. Feb. and we had nothing in Dec. OTOH, if you take the approximately 7" that fell at BWI in 12/82 and add it to the 22" that fell in 2/83, you have a very close match to this year's bliz and seasonal snow totals.