Thread: Latest EL Nino (Spanish for the Nino)/Southern Oscillation forecast

the snow piled up in the pnw.
bF

I'm guessing your forecast for this season's total snow is right on, but as the saying goes.;;Lies, damn lies, and statistics....Seems like Steamboat and Vail tallies are off by almost 100".

Mediocre season as far as pow days but I've seen much worse overall conditions. Ghee still has a 48-100" base off of only 360"ytd, which is actually a minor miracle in itself. I can think of three or four drought winters where a 360" season meant a late, rocky start and then a rotting snowpack by April, neither of which happened this year. Still, other than the really quick start to the season, not much else has been very memorable. One excellent 50" week in late January was the only "epic" so far. 25 more days left for the ghee to get over the 400" hump.

EL NIÑO/SOUTHERN OSCILLATION (ENSO)
DIAGNOSTIC DISCUSSION
issu
ed by
CLIMATE PREDICTION CENTER/NCEP/NWS
and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society
9 May 2013
ENSO Alert System
Status: No
t Active
Synopsis:
ENSO
-
neutral is favored into the late Northern Hemisphere summer 2013.
During April 2013,
ENSO
-
neutral continued
, with near
-
average sea surface temperatures (SSTs)
observed across most of the equatorial Pacific Ocean, and below average
SSTs confined to the far eastern
equatorial Pacific
(Fig. 1).
The Niño indices were near zero throughout the month, except for the
Niño1+2 region which was
between
-
1.2
°C and
-
0.5°C
(Fig. 2).
The oceanic heat content
(average
temperature in the upper 300
m of
the
ocean)
remained near average during April
(Fig. 3), reflecting near
-
average subsurface temperatures
at depth across most of the central and eastern equatorial Pacific
(Fig. 4).
The tropical low
-
level easterly winds remained slightly enhanced over
the western half of the Pacific
basin, and anomalous upper
-
level westerly winds prevailed across much of the equatorial Pacific
.
Tropical convection was enhanced over Indonesia and the western Pacific and suppressed over the central
Pacific
(Fig. 5).
Coll
ectively, these conditions indicate the continuation of ENSO
-
neutral
.
Most models forecast
Niñ
o
-
3.4 SSTs to remain ENSO
-
neutral
into the Northern Hemisphere
winter
(Fig. 6)
, with dynamical models tending to predict warmer conditions (
-
0.3°C to
0.4°C) th
an the
statistical models (
-
0.7°C to 0°C)
.
There is still low confidence in the forecasts for the latter half of the
year, partly because of the so
-
called “spring barrier,” which historically leads to lower model skill for
forecasts made between March and
May. Forecast confidence will increase over the next few months.
The current forecast indicates that
ENSO
-
neutral
will likely continue
into the second half of the Northern
Hemisphere summer
2013
(see
CPC/IRI consensus forecast
)
.