ENSO region 3.4 droppng steadily now; is It too late?

As winter weather lovers from the Rockies to the East Coast... as an into traders and ski resort operators and winter clothes manufacturers continued to bemoaned and cry over the warm December 2006 it would be easy to infer or extrapolate that the rest of the winter is going to end up just as mild and just as uneventful. However I'm not yet ready to go that route for what I believe to be a number of good reasons.

In the synoptic situation we having other strong large Plains closed cut off Low
(CCULL) that is going to develop over the Rockies and probably bring another extremely heavy snowstorm places such as Denver and much of Eastern Colorado and Western Nebraska in a manner very similar to what they saw last week. I think it is pretty the amazing how the pattern is repeating itself when you come to think about. I am not prepared to say that places such as Denver in Eastern Colorado will see 24 more inches of snow but certainly potential is there for another major snowstorm if not outright blizzard. This time it looks like a places as far west as Salt Lake City could see significance snows that could extend into much of Wyoming.
With the large high over the East Coast moving out to sea and the subtly inflow providing a abundant amount of moisture and rainfall with the cold front associated from this Plains low should produce significant showers and thunderstorms and heavy rain across the Delta slows much of the Midwest and East Coast areas by the time the month comes to end.

Interestingly the operational 0z and 12z European and even the GFS here at midday are developing a+ PNA pattern for the first time in several weeks. Of course the +PNA is not going to last in this overall atmospheric configuration but Eaton might be the sign of things to come since it is the first one were going to sea in a long time.

In case you did not notice the official readings came out on Monday Christmas Day for the SSTA's in the ENSO region 3.4... and it was down again for the second week in a row. It droped from +1.3C DEC 18 to +1.2 DEC 25.... and the Australian folks have the reading as low as +1.1
There is little doubt now in anybody's mind who has the slightest bit of meteorological skill that the El Niño has reached its peak and is beginning to weaken at a fairly good clip. If the Australian that is correct that about time we reached the first week of January we may be below the moderate El Nino threshold criteria of +1.0c.

The argument on why a weakening El Nino MEANS something is that when the weak El Nino was underway in SEPT & OCT .. THAT is when the pattern was locked in with cold and we saw several major east coast lows-- Noreasters. Then as the moderate El Nino bole above +1.0 in early NOV the cold pattern collapsed and across North America the Pac Jet took over with mild Pacific air masses taking over. So presumably as the current Moderate but weakening El Nino drops to +1.0 c and lower the CURRENT warm pattern will end as well. I don't think to many forecasters are going to have problems suggesting that the very mild and wet pattern we seen over much over the US is going to change as the El Niño weekends and drops below that magic threshold criteria of +1.0 but that is still a long way from a sustained cold and stormy pattern likely saw in September and October.

In other words is quite possible that we may shift from this current mild and wet pattern to something else but that something else is not necessarily a strong & locked in WINTER pattern for the second half the winter. So yes I do see a significant change coming in the overall pattern but whether or not it turns towards the pattern which supports the second half of wnter idea as I have described in my WINTER forecast is a totally unknown and different question.



Let me present to you some more pieces of data. This first one is the spread of the different ENSO climate models which you can see on a monthly basis at the Institute for research international or IRI wb site. Now if you take a look official notice how significantly downward the trend is in SSTAs in all the models as we go into the second half the winter.

http://iri.columbia.edu/climate/ENSO/currentinfo/SST_table.html


Compare that to the IRI NOV 2006 models .... here...
http://iri.columbia.edu/climate/ENSO/currentinfo/archive/200611/SST_table.html

If you cannot see the significant change in how the models are handling the El Niño into the second half of the winter and into the spring and you're probably blind. Or perhaps you are a ignoramous.

The CPC enso plumes that are run weekly can be seen here...
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/images/nino34SSTMon.gif

and as you can see the data is very clear that the ENSO was on the verge of collapse at least according to these computer models and the spaghetti plots their showing. By the end of January according to these CFS runs from the early and Mid DEC data the SSTA's the esno 3/4 readings will be close to +0.6. Moroever take a look at the END of the graph... which is JULY 2007. Note how many models have dropped BELOW the zero line!!!! This has major implications for the Hurricane season of 2007 . Neutral conditions -- not El Nino not La Nina but LA NADA -- are now LIKELY for the Hurricane season 2007 and IF these models are correct we may be in a LA NINA for the late Summer / Autumn of 2007 which is very favorable for above average activity in the 2007 Hurricane season