Phil

Don’t expect some magical summer cooling as if nature snapped her fingers, however warm season temperature trends will likely plateau (or fall back slightly) from post-2013 averages over the coming decade, IMO, while winters become the seasonal focus of warming. Barring the unlikely scenario of a large unforced climate shift/cooling which isn’t possible to predict at high temporal resolution.

FWIW, as of February 2026, RONI has replaced ONI as official metric by which the CPC classifies ENSO. So from here out I suppose this is the index we’ll use for ENSO amplitude in the official sense. https://www.weather.gov/media/notification/pdf_2026/pns26-05_Relative_ONI.pdf

Subsurface warm anomalies are so outrageous CPC had to widen its color bar by 2°C. Even then it’s still maxed out. This week vs last week.

The enhanced warm season warming relative to the cool season in the PNW was a consequence of intradecadal variability related to changes in the IPWP structure and associated seasonality of ITCZ structure there. That mode of variability has begun to rapidly quasi-invert since 2024. Going forward (on an intradecadal timescale) it is likely that warming in the PNW will be focused during the cold season with summers probably not changing much or even cooling slightly relative to the post-2013 averages. In essence the overall amplitude of the seasonal cycle in the PNW will generally flatten over the coming decade with fewer seasonal extremes. Which I assume is probably better for the regional biosphere.

Yeah those analogs were very boom/bust here, basically no cold supply but the active STJ was enough for some historic blizzards sandwiched between cycles of upper level torching. 1991/92 was the only one that failed altogether (likely a result of the super +NAM which was augmented by Pinatubo and an already compromised BDC/poor O^3 environment).

I’m not diagnosed but am pretty dang sure I’m on some kind of spectrum. I’m a weird azz mofo.

Takes one to know one.

Healthy 1st year niños w/ +QBO at nexus of intradecadal IPWP extension/+PMM transition: 1957/58, 1982/83, 1991/92, 2002/03, 2015/16. Very high internal consistency in this analog pool with the canonical niño longwave pattern evolution over the NPAC, and neutral ENSO the following year in all cases.

Here comes Dr. Niño

Those weeping willows are surprisingly resilient and grow very quickly. We had a large one on our property when I was a child which was also taken out by an ice storm in 1999. Like 80% of the tree had split off and yet somehow it regrew and survived another 5+ years before a summer thunderstorm took it out completely in 2004.

We just came out of 8+ weeks of eastern torching and PNW troughing. Are we allowed at least a couple weeks reprieve?

An unsurvivable blowtorch. The doomposting over room temperature highs is downright hilarious.

This is a good read re: western megadroughts: https://ocp.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/drought/medieval.shtml

Yes because it’s reflective of a broad Z-circulation and a strengthened NPAC High, which directly teleconnects to enhanced Indo-West Pacific Convection (which requires a strong Walker Cell, and thus augmented equatorial trade winds). Simply put. Although there are a slew of other methods to hypothetically reconstruct ENSO, I find lower frequency off-equator sub-proxies tend to offer the most insight and the best consistency.