2024-2025 La Nina

[mitchnick]

18 minutes ago, Stormchaserchuck1 said:

Warmest the subsurface has been since early February

Top map shows we've had a few weeks of westerlies but looks like some cooling will begin shortly per Gfs.

Bottom map is the Cfs2 which suggests cooling returns thru December, albeit sketchy. No doubt if we get an official Niña it'll be weak...very weak! Lol

 

 

[michsnowfreak]

1 hour ago, jm1220 said:

There’s a balance between more moisture since it often also means more warmth which carries the more moisture. Hopefully that “balance line” where more moisture means too much more warmth hasn’t passed my latitude yet and my average starts going down significantly, but that’s one consideration. I agree though that I-90 and north it’s still a good tradeoff. For DC though it’s hard to argue that they’ve begun a longer term snow downtrend and it seems to be creeping north over time. But La Niña which we seem to be in some permanent iteration of through the bad MJO phases and rampaging Pacific jet can still be salvageable around 40N with the right long wave pattern and some blocking. 

I agree. I have just noticed that for some reason, the really mild winters here seem to have more punch for snowfall than winters with those same temps had decades ago. I always prefer colder because its automatically better for snowcover and more snow here, but warmer is not ever really a death sentence for seasonal snowfall here (depending on the pattern).

[michsnowfreak]

1 hour ago, jm1220 said:

When I was a kid in the 90s we often saw these nickel and dime storms here with some clippers that dropped a few inches. Last winter was maybe a nickel winter where we had a couple minor events and one warning event in early Feb that still ended up well below normal but otherwise drenched with near record precip in the El Niño pattern. Lately though it has become much more boom and bust since we can get the big offshore coastal snowstorms that nail New England like Nemo 2013, Juno 2015 and the Jan 2022 storm, and also the massive El Niño ones like Jan 2016. But we can also get completely porked. 

The 1990s (and I think 1980s) were like the heyday for clippers. But we relied TOO much on them here, which is why 2000s and 2010s winters were much snowier than the 1990s here. As an outsider to the east coast, my general impression of your climate is certainly the "feast of famine" you describe has become more common in recent years.

[snowman19]

13 hours ago, mitchnick said:

Top map shows we've had a few weeks of westerlies but looks like some cooling will begin shortly per Gfs.

Bottom map is the Cfs2 which suggests cooling returns thru December, albeit sketchy. No doubt if we get an official Niña it'll be weak...very weak! Lol

 

 

Looks very likely now that we see a weak, central-based La Niña (ONI). The RONI is a different story. The MJO is going to traverse back to the Maritime Continent (phases 4-6) next month and we are going to start seeing the enhanced trades/EWBs again and the SOI should rise. The PMM and IOD going negative only lends more support to Niña development…the -PDO goes without saying

[bluewave]

The record Aleutian Ridge will continue into October as 500mb heights approach 600 dm east of Japan.  There could be a near record PAC Jet extension out near the Bering Sea. We’ll have to see if models continue with the levels near 5 sd. 
 

 

[snowman19]

1 hour ago, bluewave said:

The record Aleutian Ridge will continue into October as 500mb heights approach 600 dm east of Japan.  There could be a near record PAC Jet extension out near the Bering Sea. We’ll have to see if models continue with the levels near 5 sd. 
 

 

Here comes the next round of SST warming from east of Japan to the western Aleutians. Positive feedback cycle 

[Typhoon Tip]

18 hours ago, michsnowfreak said:

I'll hold out hope to see that someday. This more moisture thing is a good thing for northern climes imo.

here ...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-024-00761-8

so long as we were bringing it up.  i've been seeing papers emerge about this for 20 years or more, actually.  but in this particular rendition the science states a top 5 wet winter ( meaning precip ... not necessarily ptypes ) may become a 1::4 year deal.  prior climate generation/inference would suggest a return rate much, much longer. even 'rare'  - it'll likely chap assess for being inconvenient to narratives, but cites the cause as a warming climate. it is what it is -

in order to get from 1980 to 2050 ... 2100, it's entirely academic that we are seeing these precip bomb events ... increasing in frequency.. and so on

[so_whats_happening]

4 hours ago, snowman19 said:

Here comes the next round of SST warming from east of Japan to the western Aleutians. Positive feedback cycle 

These waters do not warm this time of year, rather they tend to just not cool off as much. I do find it interesting to see the anomalies start the uptick though in Bering sea and sea of Okhotsk. Will have to keep a monitor on how this goes in the coming month or so.

[michsnowfreak]

3 hours ago, Typhoon Tip said:

here ...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-024-00761-8

so long as we were bringing it up.  i've been seeing papers emerge about this for 20 years or more, actually.  but in this particular rendition the science states a top 5 wet winter ( meaning precip ... not necessarily ptypes ) may become a 1::4 year deal.  prior climate generation/inference would suggest a return rate much, much longer. even 'rare'  - it'll likely chap assess for being inconvenient to narratives, but cites the cause as a warming climate. it is what it is -

in order to get from 1980 to 2050 ... 2100, it's entirely academic that we are seeing these precip bomb events ... increasing in frequency.. and so on

Its a lot to read but i get the gist. It will take a long time to actually see if it comes to fruition, but this is absolutely a good thing for snow lovers in the Great Lakes. It would likely increase it all (snow, rain, and ice events).

[mitchnick]

18 minutes ago, so_whats_happening said:

These waters do not warm this time of year, rather they tend to just not cool off as much. I do find it interesting to see the anomalies start the uptick though in Bering sea and sea of Okhotsk. Will have to keep a monitor on how this goes in the coming month or so.

That map jibes with the link below that shows some cooling around Japan and a migration east, while also weakening, of the warmest N Pacific anomalies.

https://psl.noaa.gov/map/clim/sst.anom.anim.week.html

[snowman19]

21 minutes ago, mitchnick said:

That map jibes with the link below that shows some cooling around Japan and a migration east, while also weakening, of the warmest N Pacific anomalies.

https://psl.noaa.gov/map/clim/sst.anom.anim.week.html

The ensembles are showing a huge ridge developing from just east of Japan to the western Aleutians and a big vortex in the GOA at the beginning of October. If correct, we are going to see strong upwelling and cooling of the SSTs in the GOA 

[mitchnick]

1 hour ago, snowman19 said:

The ensembles are showing a huge ridge developing from just east of Japan to the western Aleutians and a big vortex in the GOA at the beginning of October. If correct, we are going to see strong upwelling and cooling of the SSTs in the GOA 

Could be, but we'll just have to see if 1) it develops as progged and, 2) the actual response. As we've this year, trying to predict ocean water temps around the world has been tough, seemingly tougher than usual.

 

P.s. I  would hope that October updates starting next week can reach a consensus on the Niña with some degree of accuracy.

[snowman19]

44 minutes ago, mitchnick said:

Could be, but we'll just have to see if 1) it develops as progged and, 2) the actual response. As we've this year, trying to predict ocean water temps around the world has been tough, seemingly tougher than usual.

 

P.s. I  would hope that October updates starting next week can reach a consensus on the Niña with some degree of accuracy.

I was kind of doubting an official Niña for awhile but the recent cooling and projected cooling/EWBs in region 3.4 coming up, along with the rapidly developing -PMM, -IOD, severely -PDO, the SOI finally going positive (albeit weakly), the MEI coupling and the continued Niña background forcing state (OLR), gives me confidence that we do see an official weak La Niña (ONI) 

[mitchnick]

1 hour ago, snowman19 said:

I was kind of doubting an official Niña for awhile but the recent cooling and projected cooling/EWBs in region 3.4 coming up, along with the rapidly developing -PMM, -IOD, severely -PDO, the SOI finally going positive (albeit weakly), the MEI coupling and the continued Niña background forcing state (OLR), gives me confidence that we do see an official weak La Niña (ONI) 

Months of a weak Niña Enso is for certain.  Whether we get the requisite 5 trimonthlies to qualify as an official weak Niña remains a question in my mind. Mainly because waters seem to go to neutral pretty fast after December from what I've seen. But maybe I'm not looking at the right stuff, idk.

[BlizzardWx]

I don't have the expertise that you guys do, but for fun here was what I came up with for a preliminary guess at winter. I weighed ONI/MEI, PDO, recency, and pattern comparison. I didn't use solar as much since I don't know how much that actually matters. 

The composite of those years compared to this month and next looks reasonable:

Usually there is some long term background signal with anomalies that rolls into winter, just shifted a bit. So what we have so far this year mostly lines up with the forecast, but might suggest a slightly weaker SE ridge than my composite had. It doesn't look good for the east, but maybe a little hope with that in mind. For me, I think the odds of an above average caliber winter blast are high, but snow will come down to the luck of the draw. However, most winters have been bad here for the last 9 years or so (7/9). 

 

[George001]

The hurricane season was written off too early, we just had a category 4 landfall in Florida and there is another one on its heels on the gfs. Will it be a 200+ ACE season like many initially thought? Probably too late for that, but 150 is very possible as a high end outcome if the gfs has the right idea (although I do think it will be less than that because the other guidance is less aggressive). I do not think this will be a severe hurricane season, but that doesn’t mean it will be a low ACE year either. It’s probably going to end up somewhere around average to a bit above. 

[George001]

I’m not sure if the uptick in hurricane activity is related to this or not, but La Niña development has taken off recently. The La Niña is also becoming more central based with significant cooling in the ENSO 3.4 region. ENSO 4 has been cooling as well, I am starting to think a modoki is possible (which is why 22-23 looks like a pretty good analog right now). 

[snowman19]

Strong -PMM developing and quickly….

[bluewave]

4 hours ago, George001 said:

I’m not sure if the uptick in hurricane activity is related to this or not, but La Niña development has taken off recently. The La Niña is also becoming more central based with significant cooling in the ENSO 3.4 region. ENSO 4 has been cooling as well, I am starting to think a modoki is possible (which is why 22-23 looks like a pretty good analog right now). 

My guess is that the uptick in tropical activity is related to the Atlantic warming in the last few weeks. Notice how the Atlantic was the warmest early in the season for Beryl and then dropped during the lull through August. Could be related to the lapse rates improving as the upper atmosphere differential probably wasn’t as great and the stability dropped. So we have a shot at finishing the season over 100 ACE which would be closer to average. We also had a lull during August 2022 and then an increase in September like this year. That year featured Ian in the Gulf during September and this year Helene.

 

Warming surface decreased the delta from the upper levels to surface allowing more development.

 

 

 

[mitchnick]

17 minutes ago, bluewave said:

My guess is that the uptick in tropical activity is related to the Atlantic warming in the last few weeks. Notice how the Atlantic was the warmest early in the season for Beryl and then dropped during the lull through August. Could be related to the lapse rates improving as the upper atmosphere differential probably wasn’t as great and the stability dropped. So we have a shot at finishing the season over 100 ACE which would be closer to average. We also had a lull during August 2022 and then an increase in September like this year. That year featured Ian in the Gulf during September and this year Helene.

 

Warming surface decreased the delta from the upper levels to surface allowing more development.

 

 

 

Don't discount the MJO as a factor.

[bluewave]

21 minutes ago, mitchnick said:

Don't discount the MJO as a factor.

If you look at the VP anomalies  there was a short window of improvement over the Atlantic this week so the effect was probably more subtle combined with the warming SSTs increasing instability. 

[snowman19]

The hurricane season was written off too early, we just had a category 4 landfall in Florida and there is another one on its heels on the gfs. Will it be a 200+ ACE season like many initially thought? Probably too late for that, but 150 is very possible as a high end outcome if the gfs has the right idea (although I do think it will be less than that because the other guidance is less aggressive). I do not think this will be a severe hurricane season, but that doesn’t mean it will be a low ACE year either. It’s probably going to end up somewhere around average to a bit above. 

[mitchnick]

11 minutes ago, bluewave said:

If you look at the VP anomalies there wasn’t as big a difference over the Atlantic so the effect was probably more subtle combined with the warming SSTs increasing instability.

Helene developed in the Gulf of Mexico per attached and with rapid development occuring in the last 24 hours west of Florida. Color me skeptical on the Atlantic warming as much, if any, of a major factor, especially in light of the MJO. But that's just mho.

[bluewave]

16 minutes ago, mitchnick said:

Helene developed in the Gulf of Mexico per attached and with rapid development occuring in the last 24 hours west of Florida. Color me skeptical on the Atlantic warming as much, if any, of a major factor, especially in light of the MJO. But that's just mho.

We got Debby back in early August during the last favorable MJO interval, but Helene was much more intense this week. My guess is that the warming surface SSTs relative to the higher atmosphere allowed a more unstable storm environment. I was pointing this out back during the August lull that a storm getting into the Gulf had a chance of really taking off due to the record SSTs. Notice the SST warming pulse just prior to Helene in the Gulf like we saw with the entire Atlantic basin. There were comments back in early August how people were surprised that the favorable MJO interval back then didn’t lead to another major hurricane like Beryl.

[PhiEaglesfan712]

6 hours ago, George001 said:

I’m not sure if the uptick in hurricane activity is related to this or not, but La Niña development has taken off recently. The La Niña is also becoming more central based with significant cooling in the ENSO 3.4 region. ENSO 4 has been cooling as well, I am starting to think a modoki is possible (which is why 22-23 looks like a pretty good analog right now). 

07-08 is probably the top analog right now. That year, we had just the 2 big storms (Dean and Felix) like we do this year (Beryl and Helene). Also, the la nina development took off right about this time in 2007, and though we will likely not reach the ONI strength of that year, the MEI/RONI are a near perfect match. Not to mention, 07-08 was a central based, modoki la nina. Only thing really going against it was that 07-08 was near a solar minimum, while we are currently near a solar maximum.

22-23 was a dissipating la nina, which is opposite of what we have this year.

[raindancewx]

Atlantic still has a long way to go to be anywhere near average for ACE. We're running more than 20% below average still and that's after a very fast start. The season after Beryl has been extremely inactive. It's Beryl and then less than 40 ACE otherwise. 

Isaac & Joyce will both die Sunday/Monday. Neither is going to add very much ACE in the short term. The formula is sustained winds in knots squared measured every six hours (UTC time) divided by 10,000. You're looking at 3-5 ACE per day for another two days or so from those storms. At that point we're around 80 ACE with 94 as average through 9/30. It doesn't look like there is anything that will be strong enough imminently to bump up ACE quick after Isaac dies. So entering October we probably start to fall behind relative to average again. Early October still sees ACE go up by 1 point or so per day. 

October averages 20-25 ACE so even in a bit of a dead season you should see some tropical activity.

My general rule is September + 60 ACE is a pretty safe ceiling. It's very rare to get anywhere near 60 ACE in Oct-Nov. So we're almost certainly looking at 80-140 for the season. Still think we could finish as low as 90 ACE but 100-110 is probably a better bet now. Since 1850 (170+ years) it's like seven hurricane seasons with 60+ ACE for Oct-Nov. Even for the 1991-2020 period which is mostly the warmed up, warm AMO, it's still only 2005, 2016, 2020 (3/30 years) or 10%. The 2016 season had Matthew (cat 5) and Nicole (cat 4) form in late Sept/early Oct and carry on for a while after an inactive start. Matthew was a 4/5 in October for like five days which is nuts. That's probably the best case for those of you who want the hyperactive ACE totals. But I don't expect to see multiple long-duration cat 4+ storms in early October this year.

[snowman19]

4 minutes ago, raindancewx said:

Atlantic still has a long way to go to be anywhere near average for ACE. We're running more than 20% below average still and that's after a very fast start. The season after Beryl has been extremely inactive. It's Beryl and then less than 40 ACE otherwise. 

Isaac & Joyce will both die Sunday/Monday. Neither is going to add very much ACE in the short term. The formula is sustained winds in knots squared measured every six hours (UTC time) divided by 10,000. You're looking at 3-5 ACE per day for another two days or so from those storms. At that point we're around 80 ACE with 94 as average through 9/30. It doesn't look like there is anything that will be strong enough imminently to bump up ACE quick after Isaac dies. So entering October we probably start to fall behind relative to average again. Early October still sees ACE go up by 1 point or so per day. 

October averages 20-25 ACE so even in a bit of a dead season you should see some tropical activity.

My general rule is September + 60 ACE is a pretty safe ceiling. It's very rare to get anywhere near 60 ACE in Oct-Nov. So we're almost certainly looking at 80-140 for the season. Still think we could finish as low as 90 ACE but 100-110 is probably a better bet now. Since 1850 (170+ years) it's like seven hurricane seasons with 60+ ACE for Oct-Nov. Even for the 1991-2020 period which is mostly the warmed up, warm AMO, it's still only 2005, 2016, 2020 (3/30 years) or 10%. The 2016 season had Matthew (cat 5) and Nicole (cat 4) form in late Sept/early Oct and carry on for a while after an inactive start. Matthew was a 4/5 in October for like five days which is nuts. That's probably the best case for those of you who want the hyperactive ACE totals. But I don't expect to see multiple long-duration cat 4+ storms in early October this year.

Would not surprise me at all to see a final Atlantic ACE of 90-110 come 11/30

[GaWx]

4 hours ago, bluewave said:

My guess is that the uptick in tropical activity is related to the Atlantic warming in the last few weeks. Notice how the Atlantic was the warmest early in the season for Beryl and then dropped during the lull through August. Could be related to the lapse rates improving as the upper atmosphere differential probably wasn’t as great and the stability dropped. So we have a shot at finishing the season over 100 ACE which would be closer to average. We also had a lull during August 2022 and then an increase in September like this year. That year featured Ian in the Gulf during September and this year Helene.

 

Warming surface decreased the delta from the upper levels to surface allowing more development.

 

 

 

I think that regarding decreasing stability that the much lower SSN should be considered as a possible contributor. Keep in mind that Aug was way up at 215 and that it still was quite high into early Sep:

2024 09 01 2024.668 182  14.2  29  37
2024 09 02 2024.671 195  20.7  26  33
2024 09 03 2024.673 180  21.2  20  23
2024 09 04 2024.676 174  26.1  21  26
2024 09 05 2024.679 182  13.4  16  21
2024 09 06 2024.682 189  13.3  20  25
2024 09 07 2024.684 168  17.5  25  30
2024 09 08 2024.687 171  18.7  20  26
2024 09 09 2024.690 157  19.2  24  27
2024 09 10 2024.693 149  12.9  25  31
2024 09 11 2024.695 153  15.4  29  34
2024 09 12 2024.698 145  11.8  25  29
2024 09 13 2024.701 118  12.8  27  32
2024 09 14 2024.704 116  11.4  25  32
2024 09 15 2024.706 102  14.7  26  31
2024 09 16 2024.709 142  16.2  22  27
2024 09 17 2024.712 141  13.0  30  38
2024 09 18 2024.714 110   8.6  28  33
2024 09 19 2024.717 109  12.1  34  42
2024 09 20 2024.720 126  13.0  29  35
2024 09 21 2024.723 131   9.6  20  26
2024 09 22 2024.725 144  13.7  13  17
2024 09 23 2024.728 130   7.4  20  26
2024 09 24 2024.731 141  12.2  20  24
2024 09 25 2024.734 141   9.0  20  25
2024 09 26 2024.736 145  15.8  18  22

[40/70 Benchmark]

2022 is an outstanding analog....no analog will be perfect, so dismiss it at your own peril.

[roardog]

1 hour ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

2022 is an outstanding analog....ni anamog will be perfect, so dismiss it at your own peril.

I think you might have said this before too but that winter with a less amplified trough west/ridge east would actually be a very interesting winter here and possibly for you too.