Not wanting to be a harbinger of doom and what have you, especially after the great snowfalls on the first day of winter, but the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) is now showing a worse value than that for the 1982 season. If it starts to nudge up to the positives or very marginal negatives then we'll get some snow but otherwise that is making bad season noises..........bugger.
I wasn't alive then, but i do know that was the bad part of a 5 year drought. There is no reason the expect blocking highs to persist all the way through July like in a real drought... I'd say those dire times are yet to come in the next few years. I expect Lows to start pushing through early next week and a good base by mid July... SOI values don't mean much at all in the short term from my lay knowledge, one month can be well in the negative and quickly be in the positive the next. Being this close to the season following individual lows will be far more telling...
1981 was one of the best seasons ever. I was riding the Eyre T-bar on the third weekend in October. The t-bar track was in a trench over head height in some places.
There was a big snowfall in Jindy early in 1982 as well. My only memory of that year is snow in the caravan park in town all week, and riding Eyre and sking among the rocks on a great track I had carved out. And all on narrow alpine skis from the olden days. I guess the season all fell apart after that?
An interesting bit of trivia popped up in my Facebook news feed today. I live in Cairns and we have just had the wettest June on record this year with 150mm and still one day to go. The interesting part is we had a terrible wet season which ties in with an El Nino event, the wettest June prior to this year was in 1987 which was an El Nino year and also a rather ordinary snow season with no real record breaking depths. I would say that all is not lost yet if weather patterns tend to repeat themselves. The readings from Spencers Creek this year as compared to 1987 show alot of similarity to each other. I'd say the kick off for season 2015 could only be a matter of days away. This isn't based on looking at weather charts as I'm not all that good especially with looking at southern weather patterns but rather just looking at what has happened in the past. I hope I'm right.
August '82 was a losing game of dodge the rock. A real shock to the system after '81. So much gear must have been destroyed that year.
1981 was an outstanding year and it really was. Serious snow. 1982 on the other hand was a shocker. On paper it looks awful. But in fact I skied that entire season as well at FC and, while you took the rock hoppers out, the skiing was actually pretty sensational in parts. Sun Valley was great through Ruined Castle (through to the October closing weekend - Spring skiing at its finest in fact). Had a blast out in the back country XC and we took skidoos out to Mt McKay on a regular basis where it was good (sometimes great) skiing. Valley of the Moon was skiable almost to the end and the Gully was navigable. Yes, there were rocks and outcrops but these were largely avoidable. What is interesting is that it all seems relative. Perhaps we have become a little spoiled but keep in mind there was no snow making over the back (or at all) and yet the season, while not great, was a lot of fun and the cover skiable on through. My suspicion is that the amount of tree cover now present is much more than existed in the 1940s - 1980s. There is much more cover on the various trails coming back into the village, much more through the Gully and the tussock grass is substantial where it previously wasn't to such an extent. That tree cover seems to reduce a goodly amount of snow retained on the ground. Ditto grasses and (especially up through the Eagle Chair area) the low growth. No doubt the reduction in snowfall as the snowline moves up has not helped but just compare photos of the, say, 60s and 70s with now.
POAMA update has Nino3.4 > +2°C: Moves it back into line with the others, but it looks like they haven't updated the comparison graph yet:
latest essay from NOAA at climate.gov ++ Keep calm and stop obsessing over weekly changes in ENSO ++ http://www.climate.gov/news-feature...m-and-stop-obsessing-over-weekly-changes-enso
latest from Climate at Gov. ++ July 2015 El Niño update: Bruce Lee? ++ http://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/enso/july-2015-el-niño-update-bruce-lee El Niño continued to build during June, despite some shorter-term fluctuations in the climate system (here’s looking at you, MJO). CPC/IRI forecasters are still very confident that this event will persist through the winter, and they continue to favor a strong event, with the three-month average sea surface temperature in the Niño3.4 region expected to peak at more than 1.5°C above normal. Nearly all the computer models are in agreement, and the atmosphere and ocean continued to behave in a very El Niño-like manner. So what is there to talk about this month? Well, a few interesting things happened over the past few weeks. read on: http://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/enso/july-2015-el-niño-update-bruce-lee
SOI is full el nino - daily/30day are near even at -18. https://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/seasonalclimateoutlook/southernoscillationindex/30daysoivalues/ Winter seems to come in a burst sometime in July - last few years. - 2012 was longer into August/Sept If it does not rain after this - Sept could be solid with Sept/Oct school holidays the earliest they will go for a few years. Could be half epic. or could be a wash out yet... and let's not forget the hair dryer - it could easily go to full setting late August... giving a whole new meaning to the August Winds. The bush is at 3rd base for fires. It's just needs no more rain with wind and sun and it will burn.
Is it fair to compare those charts when they are just comparing month of the year rather than progressive months since start of each separate event. Each ENSO cycle is complety different driven by PDO, IDO and all the other events that determine how each el nino evolves. The climate is a kaleidoscope of chaos.
PG, how do you read these? I can see that in 97 the anomalies off South America were more intense, but what is happening in the Indian Ocean looks even more disturbing.
These are anomalies computed against the average from 1961-1990. So you have to take into account the background ocean warming that has occurred in the last 20 years. Against some measures, the 2015 El Nino has exceeded 1997 levels of consecutive weeks of Nino3 SST above 1.0 degree anomaly (10 vs 8). However, are those extra two weeks related to the strength of the ENSO event or are they are reflection of the long-term warming trend? Where we are now Highest weekly value since 97-98.
Also the Patch of negative anomaly off Greenland now, is it fair to link that to the unprecedented melt happening on Greenland now?
http://m.smh.com.au/environment/wea...hilliest-july-since-1998-20150727-gils8s.html I find the patterns interesting, there might be nothing to it but 1998 was a significant year for El Niño. Could cold Julys be a precursor to a strong El Niño? Must check.
I fear that as el nino entrenches frontal systems from now on will have little punch . what do the boffins think?
Not sure if anyone has seen this yet or are interested, but here's an article on the U.S. side of the El Niño coin... Calling it a top 3 of all time.. http://mashable.com/2015/08/13/el-nino-strongest-on-record/?utm_cid=mash-com-fb-main-link
similar article: http://unofficialnetworks.com/2015/08/godzilla-el-nino-forecasted-for-2016-ski-season Not just that but folks all over the Southwest are stoked on what may be the ski season they’ve been waiting for since 1997, which is the last time an El Niño this strong reared its beautiful head. NASA Climatologist Bill Patzert even told the LA Times that the current El Niño trend is “stronger than it was in 1997.” After the 1997 El Niño event, the Sierra Nevada mountains received approximately twice the snowfall average.
Both NINO3 and NINO3.4 SSTs anomalies have reached 2.0 degrees. 5-day subsurface temperatore anomalies from the TAO have reached +7 for the first time for this event.
Positive IOD is looming, which is bad news as the negative IOD we've had for the past few months has softened the rainfall impacts of El Nino.
A classic case of bad media reporting Not counting the major scientific flaws in this story, pay close attention to what quotes and statements are attributed to the scientist and what actually appears in quotation marks.
latest from climate.gov - with an emphasis on NA winter effects October 2015 El Niño update: Pumpkin spice https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/enso/october-2015-el-niño-update-pumpkin-spice
