This pattern is NOT El Nino like! Update 02/11/16

If you would go back and read blog posts from late summer on, I stressed many times that trying to predict long term weather (months in advance) based solely on the existence of an "El Nino", usually fails.  I  pointed out early on that a wild card this year would be the warm waters across the north Pacific.  The pattern this winter across North America has for the most part been anything but an typical El Nino pattern.  Just recently, the northeast 1/4 of the country has been very cold.  Yesterday, Thursday February 11, saw an extreme gradient of temperature.  While it was in the mid to upper 70s across southwest Kansas (there were low 80s mixed in), the temperature across Iowa and northeast Missouri was only in the teens.  That is quite a contrast!

 

The media (and even proclaimed weather experts) have said the recent warmth is tied to "El Nino".  Ha!  Based on these expert forecasts, El Nino was supposed to bring cooler than normal weather from California across the southern states (including southern Kansas).  Isn't that a bit contradictory? The recent warmth and the cold across the northeast can be traced back to the warmth across the north Pacific (the wild card).  Looking at the Thursday morning satellite image, I've circled in some crazy upper level wind flow.




Taking a composite of upper level winds during El Nino events, this jet stream configuration should not exist.  Really since December, the atmosphere has gone through several adjustments and can be tied to several events (I won't go into detail here).

I still think the pattern will settle back into what was occurring during the fall and early winter.  But when?  The jet stream configuration across the central and western Pacific is showing some characteristics of energy redistribution.  Although computer model forecasts are showing a lot, I'm still seeing a change to unsettled weather the last 7 to 10 days of this month and into March.  The February 16th (give or take a couple of days) outlook I've talked about in the past two posts, is still not showing up.  So confidence has waned on that system.  I take another look this weekend.

BTW, one of the long range computer  forecast models did have a pretty wet solution for later this month.  NOTE:  DO NOT TAKE THIS FOLLOWING IMAGE LITERALLY!

 

If we really are going to go into an unsettled pattern as stated above, then the type of output in the image should become a bit more frequent.  Not surprisingly, the same model showed very little precipitation in it's run just six hours later.