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The season started off with a very cold November, with parts of the area seeing early season snowfall (especially Illinois). Things started to shift in December, especially for the second half of the month as much of the country skewed above normal. If you subscribe to our long-range updates – you’ll note that we initially called for the cold to return late December, then we thought early January, and we continue to delay the return to a cold pattern. With our atmospheric drivers the way things appeared in mid-December, there was legit reason to believe that cold was returning by early January. Is there still reason to believe it can get colder? Yes, but it’s complicated.
There are a few things we are watching very closely that are having evident impacts on our pattern. One of those being the MJO – or Madden-Julian Oscillation. Simply think of this as an eastward moving pulse of convection (or thunderstorms) near the equator mostly found in the Indian and Pacific oceans. These areas of upward motion (where thunderstorms are located) and sinking air (suppressed convection) play a large role in the weather patterns around the globe. We have watched the MJO progress through warmer phases in mid to late December into where we are now – hence the recent warmth. If you are subscribed to our long-range forecasts, you may remember that the data kept trying to kill off the MJO pulse – and it has continued to keep chugging along. This, along with other factors we’ll discuss below, kept the hopes strong for colder risks to return in January. Still possible? Yes, but there are risks that it doesn’t. First off, I want to show you the MJO forecast through the 17th of January (delineated by the green line). We are currently moving from a warm phase 6 into phase 7. The forecast suggests we spend a few days in the favorable phase for cold (phase 8) mid-month. Notice how it wants to move the MJO back in the circle (aka weakening this pulse of convection), then re-emerging it back into warmer correlating phases of 4…etc. That would most certainly be a problem. The trends on this will need watched closely!
To see how much the MJO is having an influence, check out MJO phase 6 temperature correlation compared to the week 1 temperature outlook. Warmth in the central and eastern U.S. is well correlated.
Here’s a good way to visualize this….graphic courtesy of Dr. Michael Ventrice. The reds indicate sinking air or suppressed convection. Notice those are located over the Indian Ocean. The blues/purples indicate upward motion in the atmosphere, and that is where our MJO pulse is current located, in the western Pacific.
Another problem is the sea-surface temperature configuration in the Pacific Ocean. You may note from a blog update last Fall we discussed how the location of the warmest waters in the equatorial Pacific can have a large influence on the temperature pattern in North America. Throughout December, the eastern Pacific continued to warm, more so than the central and western Pacific.
You want the warmth placed more in the central region (Nino region 3 & 4) to support more of a cold risk for North America. Looking at years where the warmth is more eastern based, we tend to find a strongly positive EPO (+EPO continues to dominate for now), which is associated with a trough in the North Pacific and Aleutians of Alaska, this pushes heights up across the northeastern U.S….aka this is not what you want to see for cold.
Comparing a central vs. eastern Pacific Nino, you can clearly see the differences in temperature anomalies, with the eastern Pacific Nino favoring more warmth in the Eastern U.S.
We continue to watch the stratosphere as well, as we now have a Polar Vortex split. A sudden stratospheric warming event occurred in late December, which technically is classified as a 30ºc+ jump in temperatures in the stratosphere over the North Pole. You can clearly see the rapid warming that took place here in late December:
This has caused the Polar Vortex to split into 3 different lobes – check out the temperature anomalies at 10mb which is located in the stratosphere.
Remember – we don’t live in the stratosphere. You can see how one of the very cold lobes of air with the polar vortex are currently over the U.S., yet here in the troposphere below this layer temperatures are warm currently. It will take some time for these impacts to truly be felt at the surface, and watching where the coldest air propagates. What good is a cold in the stratosphere if it doesn’t propagate downward to the troposphere, where our weather occurs? Will it? Data is struggling to suggest any real tropospheric connection at this time. Our research has found years that failed to get cold with a split, so remember this doesn’t guarantee cold, but by all means if all the pieces to the puzzle land correctly this can lead to brutal cold. We still aren’t ruling out impacts eventually being felt in some shape or form. Notice the GFS forecast does not indicate a connection with the polar vortex propagating into the troposphere.
There is more involved than these factors discussed, but wanted to give you all a general idea of the things we are analyzing closely and why we have failed to see the cold return yet. We are not throwing in the towel on winter – we are still in a bit of a wait and see mode to see if things can align more favorable for cold, which is still possible. It should be clear that it’s possible these drivers never align to allow for a sustained cold pattern, we have found years similar to this where it just never happened. This is a pattern that you’ll want to stay on top of things….you can do that by signing up for our daily long-range analysis! Inquire at bamwx.com/contact-us, or e-mail [email protected]!
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-Nathan Kitchens
