Category: Winter thoughts…

This is a special day in the McMillan house.  Iron Bowl Saturday only comes around one day a year… Needless to say, the Auburn flags have been on the vehicles since Wednesday, we’re decked out in our orange and blue, and game faces are on for this evening’s matchup.  WAR EAGLE!

As we get set to flip the calendar to December, we wanted to post some latest thinking.

Let’s take a look at the latest teleconnections.  As we’ve been talking, there’s a lot of “noise” in model land, including conflicting signals.  The positive NAO and AO argue for warmer than average conditions, while the positive PNA suggests chillier than normal times should prevail.

We wanted to post the latest model predictions of each teleconnections, courtesy of Weatherbell.com.  Additionally, courtesy of madusweather.com, here’s what each teleconnection “phase” would normally lead to in December.

NAO

AO

PNA

Simply based on the teleconnections, you would build a December forecast that would lean more warm than cold, as the short term positive AO and NAO should trump the positive PNA.  As we look at the month, as a whole, the AO and NAO are forecast to trend more neutral, while the PNA remains solidly positive.  Does this suggest colder air, relative to normal, would invade mid and late month?  – Certainly something to watch.

Additionally, the latest Southern Oscillation Index (SOI), has begun to take a negative hit.  This is after weeks of positive SOI values- relative to the base state.

While it takes a while to impact the pattern, locally, this negative hit does suggest mid and late month could be a bit more interesting from a wintry perspective.  We shall see.

The CFSv2 remains very consistent on a warm month, relative to normal, particularly across the northern tier.

While we can’t post the European weeklies here, the latest run suggests colder, and stormy times around Christmas week.  Now, we should also note the overall performance of the Weeklies hasn’t been as accurate compared to normal over the past few months, but it’s another interesting trend to keep an eye on.

The MJO will begin the month in Phase 3 before going into the “wheel house.”  All-in-all, we don’t get a “hat tip” from the expected monthly MJO forecast, with the exception of Phase 3 to begin (warm phase).

To sum up:  Long range forecasting is always a gamble.  Only the good Lord knows what the future holds.  That said, there are times when we feel more confident about our long range, monthly outlooks, more so than normal.

We’ll lean warmer than normal for December (+ 1.5 at IND), and this really plays into our Winter Outlook (slow start expected with the emphasis on the cold and snow mid and late winter), but that doesn’t mean we’re expecting a “boring” month.  Keep in mind November has been both warmer AND snowier than normal, with a very busy 2nd half of the month.

We’ll have plenty of challenges to handle as we rumble through the month no doubt, but we expect the positive AO and NAO to trump the positive PNA to start to the month.  As we progress into mid and late month, we’ll have to be on alert for potential impacts of that significant SOI hit to open the month.  We’ll also keep the Weeklies in check to see if the colder, stormy look Christmas week remains.  It’ll be fun, as always.

To close, here’s one more emphatic WAR EAGLE from our home to yours! 🙂