Now what?

The caption picture sums up our conditions: Unfrozen lakes and patchy snow cover. Sunday night and Monday “delivered the goods” with 3 inches of rain and flash flooding. The only silver lining is that we didn’t have much snow to lose, anyway.

Needless to say, we have no options for snowmobiling in ilsnow land for a while. Now, we’re onto the part of the program when I attempt to peddle some hope.

For this exercise, I’ll stick with a plausible scenario. There’s enough pie-in-the-sky clickbait out there.

Leading off

Stratospheric Polar Vortex (SPV) is holding strong over Greenland, which continues to enhance westerly, zonal, Pacific flow over lower 48 states.

Over the next week, Stratospheric Polar Vortex (SPV) is expected to migrate to the other side of the North Pole.

This would not be a true polar Stratospheric warming event that unlocks the Siberian Express. But it should weaken the zonal Pacific flow and allow stale Canadian chill to press further south and gain better foothold as we approach the New Year.

Concurrently, the Subtropical Jet (STJ) would likely become active again, coughing up shortwave disturbances that may generate snow opportunities.

Even if we click on snow opportunities, the Canadian Arctic would still lack any true winter cold. This is really bad news, because we desperately need strong cold, almost as much as we need snow.

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El Niño Update

Our “friend” is still large and in-charge. It has tied for the 5th strongest El Niño event since 1950.

The clinical definition of strong El Niño is +1.5*C temperature anomaly in Nino 3.4 region. It’s been there since September and peaked above +2.0*C in late November.

Two strong classic strong El Niño signatures are mild weather and lack of snow cover over northern tier of United States, almost as indelible as fingerprints.

Going forward with El Niño

There is internet chatter that El Niño is about to suddenly collapse. Unfortunately, it takes months to dissipate such warmth from the equatorial Pacific, the largest continual stretch of water covering Earth.

The Spanish name El Nino (literally, “the son”) was coined by the fishermen of Ecuador and Peru to denote the warming of the coastal surface waters that often occurs in that area around Christmastime.

El Niño events tend to peak in December and gradually weaken through the winter and especially into spring. This may be why some El Niño winters (especially weak/moderate events) can become “back-loaded” with snow events and cold into early spring.

But, when in doubt, pay attention to what the weather is actually doing. The game needs to change before we can expect better results.

Bottom line

Sitting on December 20th, I can’t say the whole winter will be a lost cause. But my concern over El Niño has been spot-on to this point. There are still no tangible signs of real Arctic cold over North America into the foreseeable future.

When we finally get snow, grab it right away because tomorrow won’t be guaranteed.

For the ilsnow nation,

Darrin