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:
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…