QBO is Stratosphere. It works best with 1, 10, 50mb PV, which has like a 0.3-4 correlation of making it to the surface.

There is no ocean-atmosphere coupling over the NPAC outside the subtropics. The SSTs up there echo low frequency atmospheric variability tied to modes of tropical forcing.

Could be right. Those winters were solidly in established +PDO phases, so in that sense 1972 matches much better as I mentioned. Phil will tell you, I used to be the PDO guy around here lol. But hard to ignore the QBO part of the equation.

July will be cooler than normal for some places...

The most recent Euro run that goes out to when the GFS heats up.