Has the NINA Peaked?

[skierinvermont]

major warming in region 3.. despite strong trades in the region the last 5 days

[nzucker]

major warming in region 3.. despite strong trades in the region the last 5 days

Here's what Gil had to say: "Perhaps the brief weakening in mid-October also caused a brief ripple along the thermocline that is manifesting now, because animations clearly show warmer waters heading eastward at the near-surface, despite the trades."

Looks like Gil is correct that a wave of surface waters has moved eastward and warmed the regions from west-east, now hitting Region 3. There haven't been any trade winds over Region 3 though; they almost never occur that far east and most of this burst doesn't start until November 21st anyway according to the Albany map. I definitely wouldn't say there have been strong trades, and there has been some minor cooling in Region 4 which is closest to the easterly anomalies we have currently. Not sure what you are talking about here?

[skierinvermont]

Here's what Gil had to say: "Perhaps the brief weakening in mid-October also caused a brief ripple along the thermocline that is manifesting now, because animations clearly show warmer waters heading eastward at the near-surface, despite the trades."

Looks like Gil is correct that a wave of surface waters has moved eastward and warmed the regions from west-east, now hitting Region 3. There haven't been any trade winds over Region 3 though; they almost never occur that far east and most of this burst doesn't start until November 21st anyway according to the Albany map. I definitely wouldn't say there have been strong trades, and there has been some minor cooling in Region 4 which is closest to the easterly anomalies we have currently. Not sure what you are talking about here?

What do you mean there aren't usually trades in region 3???? There are almost always trades in region 3.. and they were stronger than normal over the last week. The surface waters have not moved west to east.. that's impossible there are strong east winds across all zones and you can clearly see the movement of the surface water east to west on the surface animations. Maybe there was some eastward movement a week ago.. but there certainly wasn't this week. Also you said recently that strong trades in 4 or 3.4 would upwell cold in region 3 even in the short term.. now you are saying the cooling occurs where the trades are located (you attributed some cooling in region 3 to some trades in 4 that were occurring simultaneously). You've changed your mind?

[Ji]

What do you mean there aren't usually trades in region 3???? There are almost always trades in region 3.. and they were stronger than normal over the last week. The surface waters have not moved west to east.. that's impossible there are strong east winds across all zones and you can clearly see the movement of the surface water east to west on the surface animations. Maybe there was some eastward movement a week ago.. but there certainly wasn't this week. Also you said recently that strong trades in 4 or 3.4 would upwell cold in region 3 even in the short term.. now you are saying the cooling occurs where the trades are located (you attributed some cooling in region 3 to some trades in 4 that were occurring simultaneously). You've changed your mind?

this NINA is cooked

[WinterWxLuvr]

This is where we need the "Ask a Pro" Section. I feel like I'm about to ask a dumb question, but would still like an answer.

In reading some of the recent posts here, I see the debate over whether the Nina has peaked. Well, let's say it has, just for speculation. If it has, how does this affect the winter weather patterns that we are likely to see over the next 3 to 4 months? And does it change any of the earlier thinking as to how the winter plays out?

[Fred Gossage]

This is where we need the "Ask a Pro" Section. I feel like I'm about to ask a dumb question, but would still like an answer.

In reading some of the recent posts here, I see the debate over whether the Nina has peaked. Well, let's say it has, just for speculation. If it has, how does this affect the winter weather patterns that we are likely to see over the next 3 to 4 months? And does it change any of the earlier thinking as to how the winter plays out?

That would mainly be answered on how fast the Nina then weakens. The slower it weakens (if it has indeed peaked in intensity, I'm not 100% convinced, but it's very far from impossible too), the less changes to the overall winter forecast consensus you will see...

[nzucker]

What do you mean there aren't usually trades in region 3???? There are almost always trades in region 3.. and they were stronger than normal over the last week. The surface waters have not moved west to east.. that's impossible there are strong east winds across all zones and you can clearly see the movement of the surface water east to west on the surface animations. Maybe there was some eastward movement a week ago.. but there certainly wasn't this week. Also you said recently that strong trades in 4 or 3.4 would upwell cold in region 3 even in the short term.. now you are saying the cooling occurs where the trades are located (you attributed some cooling in region 3 to some trades in 4 that were occurring simultaneously). You've changed your mind?

Huh?

The core of the current trade burst is currently located around 150E, which is outside of the ENSO regions towards Indonesia. Of course there are climatologically easterly winds in Region 3, but most of this spurt hasn't even gotten close to that area. There haven't even been intense trade winds in Region 3.4 or 4. As one other met said, the trades have been further west than normal this season, which may be one reason why the Niña isn't intensifying commensurate to the intensity of trade winds since most of them are cooling the waters towards Indonesia instead. You can see the recent cooling in Region 4 which is probably related to the intensification of trade winds, as well as the rapid cooling of the West Pacific which may also be related to where the trades are setting up this season.

The test of this La Niña's durability will come as the MJO wave mixes out and trade winds occur in the core of the ENSO regions, starting on November 22nd.

[skierinvermont]

Huh?

The core of the current trade burst is currently located around 150E, which is outside of the ENSO regions towards Indonesia. Of course there are climatologically easterly winds in Region 3, but most of this spurt hasn't even gotten close to that area. There haven't even been intense trade winds in Region 3.4 or 4. As one other met said, the trades have been further west than normal this season, which may be one reason why the Niña isn't intensifying commensurate to the intensity of trade winds since most of them are cooling the waters towards Indonesia instead. You can see the recent cooling in Region 4 which is probably related to the intensification of trade winds, as well as the rapid cooling of the West Pacific which may also be related to where the trades are setting up this season.

The test of this La Niña's durability will come as the MJO wave mixes out and trade winds occur in the core of the ENSO regions, starting on November 22nd.

You've predicted a strengthening of ENSO like a half a dozen times already the past 6 weeks, every time there is a trade burst coming. Every time there's a burst coming you've said it's a "test." When is your -2-2.5 Nina coming?

The anomalies are not usually as big in region 3 or 3.4 as they are over 4 and indonesia (not only this year but in past Ninas as well).. there were stronger than average wind anomalies last week and yet big warming. Just like the other examples I have given of this occurring as well. Trying to associate/predict short term changes in ENSO due to these 850mb anomalies has not worked at all over the last 2 months... stop trying!

[skierinvermont]

The NOAA map at 55m still shows a large pool of -5C anomalies, and it looks to be about as cold as it was this summer:

Both at 55m and overall, OHC has been rising... I think that's all Vawxman was pointing out when he said the subsurface is not quite as cold as it was.

[OKpowdah]

Notable warming across the board. The max thermocline slope continues to slide eastward; now centered around 135W

[nzucker]

You've predicted a strengthening of ENSO like a half a dozen times already the past 6 weeks, every time there is a trade burst coming. Every time there's a burst coming you've said it's a "test." When is your -2-2.5 Nina coming?

The anomalies are not usually as big in region 3 or 3.4 as they are over 4 and indonesia (not only this year but in past Ninas as well).. there were stronger than average wind anomalies last week and yet big warming. Just like the other examples I have given of this occurring as well. Trying to associate/predict short term changes in ENSO due to these 850mb anomalies has not worked at all over the last 2 months... stop trying!

Huh? There was a westerly wind burst, I said it would warm, and it did. Usedtobe agreed with my analysis and he's one of the top mets on this board. Both 850mb u-wind anomaly maps showed the westerlies that caused warm water to slide east across the regions. Sucks you don't understand what we're talking about...

Now it's back to cooling again as I predicted.

11/17 SST, ECM Analysis:

Current:

Unless this map is totally wrong, which doesn't seem likely since Unisys shows basically the same thing, the western regions have been cooling a bunch. Which I predicted would start happening this past week due to 850mb wind anomalies and low AAM...should accelerate next week.

[skierinvermont]

Huh? There was a westerly wind burst, I said it would warm, and it did. Usedtobe agreed with my analysis and he's one of the top mets on this board. Both 850mb u-wind anomaly maps showed the westerlies that caused warm water to slide east across the regions. Sucks you don't understand what we're talking about...

1. There hasn't been a westerly wind burst that has made it past Indonesia since the Nina has started. Zonal surface winds have been constantly negative, almost always with negative anomalies as well.

2. You want to point to where the warm water moved eastward in this animation? Clearly the surface current has been strongly westward the whole month.

http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_update/sstanim.gif

3. You never said it would warm... you said this after the fact.

[usedtobe]

Looks to me like there were anomalous westerly winds recently based on the aussie diagram. Note the pinks at the bottom of the diagram. It does not look like the forecast 850 winds have been very good recently making calling what will happen to the nina troubling. I'm certainly no enso expert and am more comfortable at shorter time ranges.

[nzucker]

Did someone say the La Niña was dying? Heavy cooling on the NOAA maps:

11.18 Pacific SST:

Today:

Today's SOI: +25.32

[Fred Gossage]

Yep, and the weeklies have Region 3.4 back down to -1.5C.

[keggwx]

Think we are readying the Nina submarine back down. Parascope down.

[BethesdaWX]

Damn this thing is about to tank into oblivion!

[JBG]

Think we are readying the Nina submarine back down. Parascope down.

Damn this thing is about to tank into oblivion!

As much as I along with many others here wish for Niña to weaken my gut tells me that the last wo posts are more likely. This Niña may be one for the records. My only "wishcast" is for a mellow (not white) Christmas Eve in New York, Christmas in St. Louis and New Years Eve day (see, even I admit to wishcasting). And I hope that the Niña hangs on strong enough that next summer not be a copy of 1967, 1989 or 2000.

[nzucker]

Damn this thing is about to tank into oblivion!

Yes, there's just some insane tanking going on right now. I can't wait for the CPC weeklies to be released Monday as they'll probably be impressive. I also can't wait for the trade winds to hit Region 3 as we've already seen a massive bubble of extremely cold waters surface there, and the moderate trade winds moving into the 130-150W area should enhance that tendency. This La Niña is going to have an incredible effect on global weather patterns and temperatures.

Here are the TAO/Triton maps....

11/20:

11/25:

Look at that sick bubble of -2.5C anomalies around 130W, and the new bubble of -2C anomalies around 170W. Neither of those features was well defined before.

Unisys also shows some crazy cooling in the last five days:

11/21 SSTA:

Current SSTA:

Clear blossoming of the La Niña, especially in Region 3 which was hit pretty hard a couple weeks ago. I always thought this thing was going to make a run at record strength and now it is showing that it has that potential.

[weathafella]

Nina has been steady and strong now for the past few weeks at or near its peak. But the question is, is this the peak and it stays until the wane or does it strengthen more? My guess is it's near peak and will hold through December before relaxing.

[weathafella]

Clear blossoming of the La Niña, especially in Region 3 which was hit pretty hard a couple weeks ago. I always thought this thing was going to make a run at record strength and now it is showing that it has that potential.

This pic on Tgiving day suggests while we have a basinwide robust Nina, it's not a record breaker....yet. GOA has improved dramatically of late fwiw.

[nzucker]

This pic on Tgiving day suggests while we have a basinwide robust Nina, it's not a record breaker....yet. GOA has improved dramatically of late fwiw.

Yeah it's not a record-breaker yet by any means although this week's CPC numbers could be getting close to that magical -2.0C threshold which defines the truly potent Niñas. The Thanksgiving map doesn't show the amazing upwelling that's occurred in 3.4 recently. Take a look at the latest Unisys map, seems to be emphasizing two insane cold pools, one around 100W and one around 120W:

Another burst of trade winds looks set to hit the ENSO regions soon..this should get Region 4 to very cold levels after it was lagging a bit following the early November MJO wave:

As for the GOA, looks like some water waters have briefly developed near the AK coastline, but I wouldn't expect it to last too long with the huge GoA low progged for the next few days. Any blocking that does occur over the Pacific should be more of a cut-off ridge over the North Slope or a ridge over BC/AB, not a classic GoA high pattern...I'd expect some cooling there soon, at least by Thursday's NOAA map:

[skierinvermont]

Yes, there's just some insane tanking going on right now. I can't wait for the CPC weeklies to be released Monday as they'll probably be impressive. I also can't wait for the trade winds to hit Region 3 as we've already seen a massive bubble of extremely cold waters surface there, and the moderate trade winds moving into the 130-150W area should enhance that tendency. This La Niña is going to have an incredible effect on global weather patterns and temperatures.

Yeah it's not a record-breaker yet by any means although this week's CPC numbers could be getting close to that magical -2.0C threshold which defines the truly potent Niñas.

The weeklies aren't that impressive.. they barely changed. Region 3.4 dropped a tenth to -1.6.

Here are the TAO/Triton maps....

Look at that sick bubble of -2.5C anomalies around 130W, and the new bubble of -2C anomalies around 170W. Neither of those features was well defined before.

Unisys also shows some crazy cooling in the last five days:

Clear blossoming of the La Niña, especially in Region 3 which was hit pretty hard a couple weeks ago. I always thought this thing was going to make a run at record strength and now it is showing that it has that potential.

I think you are focusing too much on small fluctuations in the Ninas strength. We always knew it was going to fluctuate. Just because it has dropped a few tenths over the last 2 weeks doesn't really make it much more likely that this will end up as record strong. I would say it had just as much potential (very unlikely) to be record strong 2 weeks ago as I would today.. very few people would expect region 3.4 was going to stay at a paltry -1.3C for long.

To get to record strength this thing would have to drop a solid .6C in the next couple weeks and then remain at or below those levels for the next 3 months. I don't think that's likely.. for one thing the subsurface has been warming and OHC is now up to -1.5C which is not very impressive given 1998 was -2.33 in Nov, and 1988 was -2.04. Obviously OHC isn't the only factor, but I think it is very unlikely to get record strength given we are relatively warm both at the surface and subsurface heading into December compared to other strong Ninas. I still think a low end strong event is most likely.

Also remember our prediction on the phone that region 4 would cool on Thursday's and Monday's map based on the trade burst? It warmed. I still see very little predictive power in the short term.

[keggwx]

Think we are readying the Nina submarine back down. Parascope down.

fyi...daily 3.4 estimate around -1.6C now...

[nzucker]

The weeklies aren't that impressive.. they barely changed. Region 3.4 dropped a tenth to -1.6.

To get to record strength this thing would have to drop a solid .6C in the next couple weeks and then remain at or below those levels for the next 3 months. I don't think that's likely.. for one thing the subsurface has been warming and OHC is now up to -1.5C which is not very impressive given 1998 was -2.33 in Nov, and 1988 was -2.04. Obviously OHC isn't the only factor, but I think it is very unlikely to get record strength given we are relatively warm both at the surface and subsurface heading into December compared to other strong Ninas. I still think a low end strong event is most likely.

Also remember our prediction on the phone that region 4 would cool on Thursday's and Monday's map based on the trade burst? It warmed. I still see very little predictive power in the short term.

Of course it depends what source you use...I was pretty surprised at the CPC/NOAA maps and numbers given what TAO and Unisys show. Of course, it's always a question of whose methodology to trust in things like this. I'm not really sure how each site prepares its map, but the TAO and Unisys showed a much stronger cold bubble in Region 3.4 as well as cooling in Region 4 that NOAA hasn't really caught onto yet. We'll see if the sources start to converge soon but I was overall surprised today at the lack of cooling shown by NOAA/CPC.

You also have to remember the weeklies are an average so include warmer days from around 11/23-25.

Unisys and TAO did show we were correct about Region 4, not NOAA. Weird stuff...

Anyway here are the CPC weeklies, good cooling across the board but nothing earth-shattering:

Region 4: -1.4C

Region 3.4: -1.6C

Region 3: -1.7C

Region 1.2: -1.4C

[Neblizzard]

Of course it depends what source you use...I was pretty surprised at the CPC/NOAA maps and numbers given what TAO and Unisys show. Of course, it's always a question of whose methodology to trust in things like this. I'm not really sure how each site prepares its map, but the TAO and Unisys showed a much stronger cold bubble in Region 3.4 as well as cooling in Region 4 that NOAA hasn't really caught onto yet. We'll see if the sources start to converge soon but I was overall surprised today at the lack of cooling shown by NOAA/CPC.

You also have to remember the weeklies are an average so include warmer days from around 11/23-25.

Unisys and TAO did show we were correct about Region 4, not NOAA. Weird stuff...

Anyway here are the CPC weeklies, good cooling across the board but nothing earth-shattering:

Region 4: -1.4C

Region 3.4: -1.6C

Region 3: -1.7C

Region 1.2: -1.4C

This makes it a high end Moderate Nina as of this time. Will be interesting to see how things evolve the next several weeks. La Nina climo strongly opposes major east coast snowstorms unless you live in Northern New England. How many KU storms have there been in La Nina's of this magnitude? January 25, 2000 is the only one I could think of....

[nzucker]

February 25,1989 just missed being a KU in a strong La Niña...nailed the Delmarva with 20" of snow and then went on to nail Cape Cod, just missing the major cities.

March 1956 had an I-95 HECS (KU event) in a strong La Niña that peaked at -2.0C.

[nzucker]

By the way, the October 2010 PDO was -1.06

[Neblizzard]

February 25,1989 just missed being a KU in a strong La Niña...nailed the Delmarva with 20" of snow and then went on to nail Cape Cod, just missing the major cities.

March 1956 had an I-95 HECS (KU event) in a strong La Niña that peaked at -2.0C.

I remember Feb 1989 quite well. I live in Northern NJ and we were suppose to get 6-8 inches, the sun came out at 11am while Cape May got buried with a foot of snow. So history has shown it's quite rare but it can happen especially if the La Nina's influence on the pattern can relax. So far we have had impressive blocking in the Atlantic, if that can sustain itself and the Pacific can amplify at times this winter, chances will increase for a MECS at some point........

[nzucker]

I remember Feb 1989 quite well. I live in Northern NJ and we were suppose to get 6-8 inches, the sun came out at 11am while Cape May got buried with a foot of snow. So history has shown it's quite rare but it can happen especially if the La Nina's influence on the pattern can relax. So far we have had impressive blocking in the Atlantic, if that can sustain itself and the Pacific can amplify at times this winter, chances will increase for a MECS at some point........

The biggest hope for the East Coast is just to maintain the absurd NAO/AO block that's occurring right now. Most La Niñas don't have nearly the amount of high-latitude blocking we're seeing this winter, and that's why 55-56 was an important analog for me since it did have the strong -NAO despite a raging Niña. I went pretty cold/snowy for December as I think we'll get something from the Day 7 threat and then have another reload of the pattern later in the month. I do think that eventually the Niña and strong PV will overwhelm the blocking signal and we'll get a milder February, but it's hard to say as we're playing around with levels of solar activity that haven't been seen since 1810. No one knows if that's the reason the AO/NAO are behaving like this. Some old-school La Niña winters were very snowy and cold for the East Coast, such as 1903-04 and 1916-17.