Daniel Swain had some pretty good insight into how an atmospheric river over Washington state influenced the record breaking ridge over the desert SW back in March

There are so many subtleties to our regional climate which unfortunately gives fuel to the statistic cherry pickers. The warming is highly asymmetrical on a seasonal scale with summer warming being dominant and wet season warming being more subtle and generally felt more in terms of low-to-middle elevation snowpack. Then you have the Columbia river project which continues to keep irrigated areas several degrees cooler in summer than they would be if they were compared directly to pre-1950s climate. Plus all of the decadal and multi-decadal ocean current variability which Phil is constantly hammering us about. Oh—and lots of new research indicating a direct connection between the warming Pacific Ocean and western US heatwaves via latent heat release in atmospheric rivers. A new study on the connection with the 2021 heatwave just came out: https://cw3e.ucsd.edu/cw3e-publication-notice-the-role-of-an-atmospheric-river-in-amplifying-the-june-2021-western-north-american-heat-wave/

What's more unbelievable than that is what it has for DJF overall (and it's had this kind of look for multiple runs now). This despite it also showing a super Nino. There is no known precedent for a temp layout like this in a higher end strong/super Nino, so I continue to be skeptical. Depending on how fast the Nino weakens along with some other factors, there's a possibility that parts of January or February could offer up something that resembles winter for us, but we'll see. I would at least lean toward it being more likely to have a favorable stretch in that timeframe compared to December.

Just did it 20 minutes ago. We get a stat about Nanaimo and immediately. “Yea but SEA…”

Okay I was maybe joking a bit about the sensor but I do remember some sensor adjustment at SEA awhile back. I could be dreaming though. The disparity between here and Seattle has been unusual in recent weeks as Seattle is generally a slightly warmer climate. Without ignoring the early May warmth. Nanaimo has had 22 days of 20C+ so far this season. Their average is probably 12 or 13. The 1981-2010 average was between 10 and 11.