snow_wizard

That is a good point. The moisture was the real culprit last winter. We had our share of cold here.

I actually think a weaker Nina will serve us well. With the -QBO a strong Nina would charge up the EPO.

I just noticed his analogs were entirely based on ENSO. Pretty thin criteria.

It's probably a legit analog. A good match for solar and the preceding winter was a Nina, although 1996-97 was neutral.

I'm not as confident about OR, but up here I think this winter has a very good chance of being colder and snowier than last. That is because last winter was better down there and I think this one might have a strong N to S gradient. Being adamant it won't be colder there though....

Yup. After the warm November we had a windy and mixed December with frequent temperature swings and some snow and cold started to show up. The mid December cold snap / snow was better than anything we see in some lame winters here, and it was just a tiny appetizer. It's very interesting to note nearly all of the analogs I'm looking at had something in December even if it wasn't the big month of the winter.

Oh yes...1889-90 was orgasmic. In some ways better than 1949-50.

I'm pretty sure CA will get an AR this winter. Hard to say if it will get to So Cal or not, but it easily could.

Apparently they decided Whatcom County is part of Canada.

I'm betting you get colder than -4 this winter. This one is screaming big blast.

We're looking really good. In spite of the coming ridge being further east than I had hoped the offshore pressure and heights will be pretty high in the coming days.

The NWS has clear with chilly nights and warmish days the second half of next week. Sounds about right.

It is raining like mofo here and the radar is saturated as far as it can see.

A tree fire. Did someone have a gasoline truck they doused it with first?

Looking at the web cams the Passes picked up another nice snowfall today. Too bad the clipper got messed up. Things are fine over the Pacific, but the Eastern trough becomes too deep to allow the clipper to dig in here. We might see an improving trend on that in the home stretch, but it won't likely be much. Looking at the 500mb composites it is remarkable what a dead ringer the first 20 days of this month have been to October 1949. The composite for the final third of October 1949. is also a dead ringer to what the latest models are showing here. 1966 has also been brought up and the 500mb anoms were much less impressive and flatter that year. Not likely we will see a 1949-50 redux, but the progression and tendencies could be similar.

46 degrees AT 3PM. Pretty nippy for this time of year. Certainly been a chilly October for the first 2/3.

I agree. It's a good starting point.

Things like the PNA and NPI kind of resemble the NPS, but the NPS has particular relevance to the NW alone. As I said it's a matter of coming up with enough of these indices to where you have at least one index (out of many indices) that is highly relevant to the situation / context that we are currently in. It just so happens this year we have the NPS in a state that is highly relevant to our coming winter. This one actually holds true in spite of ENSO if the NPS is very high in October. That makes it a bit of a rarity.

It appears he got the message about the orange. It doesn't seem to be the case any longer. We DO need a wall, but that's not here nor here.

The years I'm looking at give a strong indication of December having some cold / snow, but very possibly just a warning shot. The progression you are talking about perfectly mirrors seasons like 1949-50 or 1971-72.

No doubt. It worked out really well in 1949 at least.

Looks like the warmer 500mb pattern is going to come just a little sooner than I had hoped. I would have liked to have seen one more cold shot with that clipper in a few days. Other than that a pretty textbook progression after a few deep / cold troughs in a cold ENSO October. We might still manage to get some cold nights and a couple of chilly inversion type days the final week of the month. It is pretty interesting how we still avoid much low pressure over the NE Pacific even when the ridge is so far east.

6.65 through the 19th and I'm sure yesterday was positive as well. With a mix of positive and negative NPS days coming up I'm very confident the final number will be over 3.

Yeah...we need some sun and chilly nights for those cottonwoods. The ones that turn late are usually pretty colorful presumably because we see more cold nights as we get later in the season.

This one will be interesting to watch. The picture is about to change in the tropics so a more east based ridge will be more likely as we near the end of the month. The first clipper is anyone's guess at this point. At any rate it looks like another round of fabulous leaf turning weather. The colors are fabulous here now. The maples have really come on this week and the non native trees are blazing. The real trick here is to get the cottonwoods to turn good. They put on an amazing show in Central WA every year. Here it's much more variable.