While still a little over a month from the release of our official annual Winter Outlook, we’re deep in research mode. This morning, we wanted to provide you with some updated model data, just for fun- all centered on meteorological winter (Dec. through Feb.).
UKMET- warm look with a stout southeast ridge in place.
European seasonal- warm look for the east though one could argue this would feature a warm start/ cold finish scenario (perhaps partly due to the warm SSTs in the eastern Atlantic).
Canadian seasonal- not only a cold look, but quite stormy as well. Plenty of high latitude blocking would force arctic air southeast into our portion of the country with an active storm track.
CFSv2- this would be a warm winter for the majority of the country as widespread ridging dominates.
The SST configuration remains an intriguing one. Despite the majority of data above in the warm camp as of now for the upcoming winter, this is the type setup that would likely force a predominant central/ eastern trough for the bulk of winter. The two areas we’re most focused on at this point? The central PAC and northeast PAC. Warmth across the north with cooling beginning to take place east (relative, of course, to the sea surface temperatures in the central PAC) strongly argues for cold to set up shop across the central and into the east. Let’s keep an eye on this over the next 4-6 weeks to see what, if any, changes take place. Should things remain relatively unchanged across the Pacific, we’ll likely see seasonal data begin to trend colder and colder for the upcoming winter.
(Our official detailed Winter Outlook with temperature and snowfall forecasts across the country will be out in mid to late October).
The early “baseline” of our ideas focuses on the likelihood of El Nino returning for the upcoming winter season. As we’ve stated many times in the past, each Nino event is different from one another and other ingredients (highlighted above) can play a significant role in ultimately determining the eventual outcome.
That sea surface temperature configuration in the northern Pacific argues for western Canada ridging and downstream troughiness such as the JAMSTEC, European, and CanSIPS would imply.
Despite the milder air over the past week, January, as a whole, is still running 4° below average at Indianapolis- a byproduct of just how frigid the first half of the month was.
While the January thaw has been nice, times are changing and winter sure seems to be reloading for a very active second half.
Once we get a snowpack laid down, arctic highs oozing southeast will likely lead to bitterly cold air. Recall our expectation for this pattern to yield at least (1) night of double-digit below zero lows, but it’s more towards mid-month that we think the severe cold takes hold.
The Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) is forecast to rotate into the colder phase 8 as we rumble from early to mid February. Given the amplitude of the MJO, it should continue to rumble right through the cold phases of 1,2, and 3.
All of these moving pieces that lead up to extended periods of cold, wintry conditions are part of a bigger outcome low solar, easterly QBO winters deal up. What we should experience with this setup is a 6-7 week period of wintry conditions, including times of severe cold. It appears to be a snowier version of what we went through late-December through mid-January. Hang in there, spring will come…eventually.