The RISE of a New Analog 1957-58???

No I am not willing to concede in any way shape or form anything regarding this upcoming Winter. In fact the scary or hype headlines notwithstanding I see no reason to hit the panic button that some wish to engage in regarding this winter. It's easy to write headlines which generate a lot of hysteria... whether you are writing headliens lioke " Hurricane Rita to be the worst hurricane to Texas in 100 years".... which of course hit Louisiana... or something like "2006-07 to be the warmest winter ever for CONUS". But there's a price to pay for writing silly headline grabbing Bullshit like that .

It's pretty clear the data this morning that right through December 17 much of the CONUS is going to see temperatures either Above Normal or Much Above Normal. But that is of course after a cold start to the month... so with regard to the overall temperatures over many locations east the Mississippi River by the time we get to say December 18 --20 the monthly temperature anomalies won't be that high.

Of course that really doesn't help if you're in the Plains which are pretty much going to miss out on this next cold blast coming down so they are going start warming up a lot sooner than the areas east of the Mississippi River. On the other hand if one were to take a look at let's say the European ensemble mean day 12-15 you'll see very clear signs that some sort of Ridge is trying to redevelop over western Canada and the model is depicting a broad flat trough over the Great Lakes & Northeast. If that were in fact correct ( which I dont think it will be ) such a pattern would keep the warming out of the northeast quadrant of the conus.

I noticed that the weekly SSTA figure for ENSO 3.4 which came out on Monday generated very little reaction... even though 2 weeks ago it did. Why do you think that's the case? Because two weeks ago we mots of the CONUS east of the Rockies was very warm the surge in SSTAs in enso 3.4 supported those were mongering for the warmest winter of all time. So they took the rise in SSTA and ran with it for all it's worth. Of course the problem is that now they run into the defense which is shutting down the running game big-time... jesus I am now doing football analogies and I am probably sounding like JB....

The defense or the reality here is the fact that the SSTA's last week in this week in Enso 3.4 did NOT rise. DID NOT. In fact the +1.3 C figure for enso 3.4 has held steady now for the last three weeks. Those who continue to argue that the EL Nino is going to stay Moderate or will increase through DEC are essentially are going the analog with one of two late developing El Nino events... the 1991-92 El Nino and the 1994-95 El Nino. And in fact many forecasters had mentioned these two late developing El Niño events as reasonable analogs to what we are saying here in week 2006.

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml


The problem is of course that with this new weekly reading of enso 3.4 s that again show g No rise in the enso 3.4 SSTA means the analog to 1991-92 El Nino is in deep doo doo. It simply is no longer a valid argument to make. The other El Nino analog which has to be look at carefully is the 1994-95 El Nino. In last week of November 1994 the enso 3.4 did reach +1.5c then held steady at 1.4 or 1.3 all the way through December and January and not surprisingly that was a very warm winter... and a below normal snowfall one as well. A strong case can be made that this is similar to we are saying right now but there are TWO problems here .... the SOI and the QBO valuea. In NOV 1994 the 30-day value was almost -7.0 ... and for half of the month it droped to -13.0! However the 30-day average for the SOI for NOV 2006 is approximately -2.0 .


With regard to the QBO the 1994-95 El Nino analog has a serious problem in that the QBO was strongly negative in the Summer and Autumn of 1994 ... which is the exact Opposite of what we are now seeing!!!. Yes I know some forecasters out there dont give the QBO any value but those are the same forecasters who called for 20 named TC this past hurricane season. Failing to learn from that disaster they now hold onto the 1994-95 analog for dear life as they again repeating the same mistakes... ignoring the massive Phase difference between the the QBO values of late 1994 into 1995 and what we are seeing now

Also if we take a look at the latest SUB SURFACE SSTAs in the El Niño regions down to say 100-150 meters it certainly does look very impressive with the large pools of warm water. The first link is the current or latest graph dated November 24
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_update/sstxz.gif

What's important to note is how the large pool the very warm water are migrating eastward away from ENSO REGION 3.4 and headed towards the coast of Peru. And second the increasing pool of cool SSTA which has developed in the western Pacific just over the international dateline. Again this pool of cooled water has increased dramatically over the last few weeks. The what this data is telling me is that be of El Nino is close to peaking and that those who think the Lower Moderate El Nino is going to continue with no change in strength right to into January (which would greatly increase the chances are seeing a mild winter east of the Rockies) should be very nervous right now.


Lastly lets talk about the new QBO value for November which drop slightly to very close to 10.00. http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/Correlation/qbo.data

As I mentioned in the winter forecast discussion the cycle all a positive QB O phase runs anywhere from 10 to 13 months... from neutral to the zenith back to neutral. AS I said in the Winter forecast the key feature in opinion was going to be what the NOV and DEC 2006 values and whether the drop-off begins in December. I have held all along that the second half of this Winter is when things will get active with regard to snowfall storminess and cold temperatures over the central and eastern US. A drop-off in the QBO into the single digits...say +8 or +6 ... in DEC 2006 would greatly support that view.

However that being said I am noticing a NEW analog which of some folks appear to overlook and I would have to say that i have over looked it this analog as well.

This link is the CPC enso 3.4 values going back to 1950.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml


Take a look at the year 1957. Just like to Jan 2006 Jan 1957 started out with a weak La Nina... and the El Niño 3.4 that year reached values of 1.5 and 1.6 in DEC 1957 and JAN and FEB 1958.

The match also exists in the MEI values of late 1957 into 1958... where the MEI values held right around +1.0 to +1.14... and this again seems to be similar to what we are saying with the current MEI values

http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/people/klaus.wolter/MEI/table.html

Moreover if you take a look at the QBO values of 1957... into 1958 you'll see something quite remarkable. Note that during the OCT and NOV 1957 the positive QBO values stayed around +10... which is of course is very similar to what we have here in late 2006

http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/Correlation/qbo.data
Note that in early 1958 the QBO did drop to values of +5.35 and Lower.

These very striking matches between what we are saying here in late 2006 and 1957 --58 is current unusual with regard to analogs. We really don't see analog matching like that very often in all three categories. A don't know what it means and this is certainly not in guarantee but I think it'll early at take a panic button and the rise or a near perfect analog of 1957 - 58 which featured a very mild December in 1957 -- really has to be noticed.