Category: Winter thoughts…

Research Continues For The Upcoming Winter…

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).

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VIDEO: Severe Storm Threat Later This Afternoon; Reinforcing Cool Period Around Labor Day, And More Winter Chatter…

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New Thoughts Around The Upcoming Winter…

While we’re still a couple months away from debuting our official annual Winter Outlook, we’re deep in research mode for what the ’19-’20 winter season may produce across central Indiana.

The very warm northeast Pacific sea surface temperatures are of the upmost interest.

Note how the northeast PAC waters continue to warm:

These warm waters continue to “raise an eyebrow” and will have likely have a rather significant say in what ultimately takes place later this winter across a widespread portion of the country.

We don’t have to think too terribly far back to the infamous ’13-’14 winter and what the “warm blob” produced:

Image courtesy of iflscience.com

Some of the new climate models are going to a similar look at 500mb for the upcoming winter season:

In fact, one could easily make the argument with such anomalous ridgBing across western Canada, there should be more of a downstream effect (more of a significant trough across the eastern portion of the country).

While there will be many more factors that we’ll have to build into the upcoming winter outlook, the warm NE PAC waters most certainly argue (and strongly at that) for a rather persistent western Canada/ NW Conus ridge and more of an eastern trough…

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VIDEO: Preliminary 2019-2020 Winter Idea…

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Long Range: Cold Pattern Isn’t Going Anywhere Fast…

We’ll save our short-term discussions for the severe and high-impact arctic outbreak on deck and focus our attention in this post to the upcoming several weeks. In short, we don’t expect the cold pattern to break anytime soon. Could there be a day or two of “relaxation?” Yes, but from an overall perspective, confidence is higher than normal on the colder than average pattern continuing through the month of February.

Let’s dig in to the teleconnections:

EPO

AO

NAO

PNA


Given the teleconnections in agreement pointing towards a cold pattern, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the majority of data is also on the cold train as we flip the page into February:

CFSv2 Weeklies

Weeks 1 & 2

Weeks 3 & 4

JMA Weekly

GEFS

While we aren’t licensed to show the European Weeklies, the new update runs with a cold pattern into early March. This falls in line with the overall consensus of longer range data, backed up by teleconnections.

Though not nearly at the amplitude of a few weeks ago, the MJO (Madden-Julian Oscillation) is forecast to move through Phases 5 and 6 in the coming weeks before going back into the “null” phase.


Phases 5 and 6 this time of year would suggest colder anomalies are more likely around our neck of the woods:

Given the above, we continue to think a colder than average “2nd half” of winter looms for the region. We lean heavily on the NAO, EPO, and AO state(s) this time of year and all would point towards a cold time of things moving forward, overall. The latest European Weeklies are interesting from a couple of fronts- initially very cold and then progressively stormy. The idea here is that we remain quite wintry through February and into early March before this pattern breaks. While we may not see a “repeat” visit of the Vortex, it wouldn’t surprise us to see another major arctic outbreak again this winter (after next week), but that likely comes later, and towards the end of the game before we snap into spring.

Buckle up; we think we have a long way to go this winter…

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