WPBWeather wrote:There is no El Nino yet. Maybe there will NOT be any El Nino this year. The "experts" have not been batting a thousand with their forecast this year on the Nino front. There may be other reasons for the activity level, but don't cite the Nino.
1) I strongly believe that it is finally about to start based on rapidly warming TAO and Cowan satellite based graph, westerly wind anomalies at surface in much of 3.4 now, warm subsurface, six weeks of solid -SOI, and models having predicted warming in Sep. going several months back. I'm expecting a weak to low end moderate Nino this fall/winter.
2) Despite no Nino up to this point, it has been quite Nino-like in the atmosphere with the solidly -SOI for six weeks. I've found a pretty strong correlation between SOI and the MDR activity of ~one month later. It doesn't have to wait til the Nino is official and SST anomalies are +0.5+ for it to become hostile in the MDR.