Super El Nino Likely - But What About the PDO?

[00:00:00]Super El Nino likely, but what about the PDO? I am Mark Sponsor and welcome to the Storm Surf video surf forecast for the week starting Sunday, July 19th.

[00:00:17]Storm surf, waves, weather, buoys, alimmetry, snow, temperatures, El Nino, weather analysis. essential data for outdoor people all the time. No hype.

[00:00:35]In this video, of course, we're going to talk about El Nino, the development actually of Super El Nino. It's not there yet, but by all accounts, that's where we're heading. But there were a lot of questions concerning the PDIO, the Pacific decodal oscillation, and what its impacts will have on the PD on the development of El Nino. We'll get into all that and a whole lot more as we get into the video. If you're here for the El Nino portion of the discussion, just go ahead and jump right about halfway through the video or use the chapter function down below to find it.

[00:01:07]The long-term forecast, that's where we get into all the El Nino discussion. If you enjoy the video for this week, please give us a thumbs up. If you haven't subscribed, please subscribe.

[00:01:17]Click the Storm Surf icon down in the lower right hand corner of your screen.

[00:01:21]If you have a comment or question, write it up down below. we'd be happy to respond. Um, we try to answer all the comments and I know a lot of you have good comments and that's actually what helps stir the topic for this week's video. And then finally, if you'd like to make a small donation to the cause, you may hit the super thanks button down below, the heart with the dollar sign in it. With that, I'd like to thank the folks that donated last week. Barry Hill, Tim Casten, B the Silky, Paul Tang, Fletcher 00 and his buddy Dave, DL Man, B Nadine, O Dillard, Clay Goose, Evolution, Moto, M. Collins, E Slate, David Wgner, Kenantel, Nuclear Fest, and the big contributor for the week, Hanuman Tats. Thank you all so very much. Your contributions are super much appreciated. That helps us keep going and providing this information to you. With that, let's get to work. We'll start by looking at significant wave heights around the planet. Starting in the North Pacific, there is really nothing going on, but there is a tropical storm Alita. She has produced some degree of swell. It's actually hitting Southern California and I think some energy pushing into Northern California. And that's to continue for about another day, but nothing super impressive. There's another system trying to organize south of uh Baja, too. We'll keep our eyes on that. We'll get into that in a little bit more. In the South Pacific, there is secondary gale activity. A stronger gale pushed under New Zealand and then faded right off in here. Another gale is forming from its remnants right now with 31 ft seas right here. the highest seas over this entire domain with their location. Max wind speeds 39.7 knots.

[00:03:13]Same location. So you get the idea. This energy is pushing off to the northeast targeting Hawaii, California, Tahiti, and the RA and of course Central and South America. In the North Atlantic, as one would be expected, a rather quiet pattern and no tropical activity and not a whole lot expected given the development of El Nino and its effects on the upper level winds creating shear over the uh main development region in the South Atlantic.

[00:03:43]20 foot seas over a small area but not real doing a whole lot. And the general report from South Africa is it's been a pretty lackluster season there. And then down to the Indian Ocean again, 20 foot seas doing much. Maybe 25 foot seas here southwest of Australia. I mean, yeah, of Australia. But again, kind of a quiet pattern for the moment in everywhere but the Pacific. But before we get into all that, let's take a look at current conditions. We're going to use the buoys. We're going to start up in the Pacific Northwest there off the intersection of Oregon or the border between Oregon and Washington.

[00:04:19]The Columbia River Bar Buoy 46029. We're looking at all the energy that's hitting this buoy all the way up from 30.3 second period energy. That'd be a very energetic swell. There is 0.0 ft the whole way down to 5second period. That would be like just pretty much unridable wind chop. Half a foot there. You get the idea. A little bit of energy here in the 13 to 14 second period range. Little bit more energy in the 7-second period range. use our algorithm, proprietary algorithm to try to sort out uh what the swell is. So the swell is not just the peak energy here. It is energy off on the shoulder, too. So it's a little bit of a tricky game trying to parse through this and go, well, here's swell and here's swell, but that's not swell. You get the idea. Primary swell 4.4 ft at 6.8 seconds from 305° making surf at your standard beach break. No swell enhancing bethimemetry at 3 ft. And then the secondary swell 1.3 ft at 13.7 seconds from 276° adding 1.8 ft of surf size. Not adding but in the mix with it. That'd be like knee not even thigh high.

[00:05:32]Next down to northern California. It's really central California. We're going to say Monterey Bay, Santa Cruz area using the Point Seroui 157 there off of Monterey Bay. Again, looking at the same sort of profile, but there is more energy coming from the south in the 13-second period range and then a little bit less windswell there. Primary swell 3.3 ft at 13.2 seconds from 205° making surf theoretically at 4.4t, four feet, but looking at the cams, not really, unless you're out at some maybe major exposed spot. And then the wind swell or whatever you want to call it, 3.5 ft at 9.6 seconds from 247 degrees.

[00:06:17]Also, you know, in the waist high plus range down to Southern California using the PointLoma South Buoy 191 off of San Diego. Same sort of a profile, a mixture of a bunch of energy anywhere from 5 seconds up to 22 almost 25. Yeah, 25 seconds. One/tenth of a foot. Don't know how real that is, but you get the general idea. Just sort of a steady spread of energy. Primary swell 2.4 ft at 11.1 seconds from 186° making surf at, you know, about waist high. And then secondary swell 1.6 six at 15.3 seconds from 220° doing about the same thing.

[00:06:59]So, it's a mix of lesser period and then occasionally longer period energy all pushing in at the same time. And then finally over to the southshore of the Hawaiian Islands, the Lai Buoy is down.

[00:07:12]Went down sometime this week. So, we're going to use the Barber's Point Buoy on Aahu 238. Looking at the profile here, you see a good mix of longer period energy. Well, mid period, I'll call it 13, 14 seconds all the way up to 20 seconds. This is mainly longer period energy arriving from a gale that was in the central South Pacific about a week ago. We'll get into all that in a minute. Primary swell 1.8 ft at 18 seconds from 170 degrees, making surf at 3.2 feet. Hawaiian, I guess there were waves. I looked this morning, it was head high, maybe maybe a little bit more, but let's say chest to head high really. Um, secondary swell 2.1 ft at 14.8 seconds from 181°. Also 3 foot Hawaiian.

[00:08:05]All right, let's review what's been going on in the oceans around the planet over the past week. Going back to last week's video, Sunday the 12th of July, 18Z run in the model, there was a gale that started to develop in the central south Pacific. Kind of a weird, it was actually a cut off gale, so it wasn't a traditional type storm. You see 28T seas aimed off to the north, building to 30 feet, building to 32 feet, and I think that's about what we got. 32.8 ft on Monday evening, the 13th of July. aimed well to the north. Hawaii northshore I mean southshore is about 158 west. So right there energy aimed right at it.

[00:08:46]This well also passed by Tahiti.

[00:08:48]Sideband energy from this is expected into California also but nothing particularly good. Hawaii is supposed to be the main recipient. You see this system then quickly faded Tuesday. Took aim more off to the west. There you go.

[00:09:03]And pretty much faded out. Now, of more interest, as we got into Wednesday night and Thursday, this system developed south of uh Tasmania with seas building to right there 52 feet on Thursday morning. This is on the Great Circle Path. Let me show you that. So, I'm going to do this first for Hawaii. This is the high-res surf forecast tool.

[00:09:29]There's Hawaii. There is the Great Circle Path right in there. That is like 201°.

[00:09:36]I think it's more effectively about 198° relative to Hawaii. Now, the thing is with this guy, you see it it's pushing east. Okay? And that's not really up the great circle path. In fact, it's more like 45 or 50 degrees off the great circle path. In fact, maybe I can go back here and find that previous system.

[00:10:00]Here it is right here where you see Oops. Right there. This was aimed directly up the great circle path. What is that like 160?

[00:10:10]Yeah, 171 degree path up into uh the southshore of Hawaii. So, you get the idea there. And then we'll go back and examine this other system here. Now, let's do this relative to Southern California. You see here's the great circle path. This is actually a straight line, but it is on a curve. When you have a flat map, a merkar projection like this, it kind of distorts everything. But if you literally took a piece of string and held it on a globe from Southern California to this po point here, this would be the great the where the path the string would follow on the globe. So, what are we at? We're about 215 to 211° something like that. That is I think that is basically unshadowed relative to he toy initially. You see it pushing off to the east and spreading up the great circle paths. So that and then it faded out. We'll go back and look at that in a second. But relative to let's try Northern California. It's let's see there we are. Not even as quite as well aimed up the paths, but it is less shadowed by Tahiti. 211 is right there.

[00:11:31]Okay, that is the hard cut off relative to Tahiti. So more unshadowed for Northern California, more direct energy for Southern California.

[00:11:42]Anyway, so here is that storm without the great circle fast so you can see it a little bit clearer. We got 50.8 feet and then 48 feet. This was on Thursday night and then by uh Friday morning down to 40ft seas and then it sort of faded from there. But you'll see additional energy started building behind it on Saturday with 31 ft seas building to 34 ft continuing at 34 ft and then 33 ft as of let's see can we do we have the 18Z there we do right there that's the final um um position and everything aimed more to the northeast than the first system looking back over the past week for the North Pacific now one would not expect anything unless there was some major tropical development. We're into Wednesday, Thursday. Here's uh Alita developing south of California. Not a particularly impressive storm at all.

[00:12:42]Only reach tropical storm status. We'll take a look at the details here in a second, but uh you see where are we? Oh, yeah. Right about I think it was here somewhere late late Friday night or Saturday. Max winds were only 60 knots.

[00:12:57]at 70 m an hour. Again, tropical storm force. It has produced swell, but nothing super impressive. And then we're into the current time. This this system still tracking well to the north, but getting weaker by the moment to the North Atlantic. Moving forward, it is not the time of year for anything, you know, true like a winter type storm forming.

[00:13:24]Persistent low pressure here over uh I'll call it eastern Canada has produced a series of cold fronts that push off the coast, but that's not really doing anything. And given the upper level wind situation with El Nino developing the Pacific base, it tends to push upper level uh e uh westerlys over this area traveling that direction. All that does is um shear off any development trop tropical system. So nothing happened there over the past week to the South Atlantic. We had a gale was that 20 22 20 26 ft seas targeting South Africa moving fairly close to the coast. You see sort of a ragged swell front there that eventually pushed into the coast on Wednesday late Thursday.

[00:14:13]Not sure how much swell really result from that. Another system popped up right here on Friday southwest of the coast of Africa. Probably t targeting Madagascar more than South Africa proper. Another system off to the south with 24 foot seas on Saturday, but not really doing a lot. And here's current time. 20 foot seas south of South Africa, but not a particularly banner session for the South Atlantic as would be expected during development of El Nino.

[00:14:46]And then finally, the past weekend review for the Indian Ocean, we had a small gale that pretty much petered out and didn't do a whole lot. Another one developed 31 ft seas aimed off to the northeast and lifting well to the northeast. Swell front from that. You can see it trying to organize here. Uh we'll see where we're on Friday. Swell from that system of course impacting Western Australia on late Friday and Saturday. There's the swell front from it pushing into Indonesia. Here on Sunday, the latest image and really not a whole lot behind that. So again, the Pacific is the dominant force at least for the moment. Next, we're going to do a deep dive into the South Pacific Ocean. Look at the potential for swell storm development in that area. We're going to start by looking at jetream let jetream level winds. These winds up about 30,000 ft helps support the formation of gales.

[00:15:46]When those gales form, help direct their track. We're looking for a trough. The jet pushing off to the northeast. We see that exactly right here. So, let's get ourselves oriented. New Zealand, Australia, uh, Chile down here, Antarctica down below the ice line about 63 south, something like that. So along in here, this trough or the jet is pushing off to the northeast. What that helps do is create a clockwise flow, a loft in the atmosphere in Eddie. That is the hallmark of low pressure. It also manifests itself down on the ocean surface. And of course, the stronger the low pressure is, the stronger the winds it generates. Those winds get traction on the ocean surface, produce seas.

[00:16:29]Those seas start propagating away from the fetch area. The lesser period elements of that swell decay away, exposing longer period swell, and longer period swell when it reaches your beach, turns into surf, you really need a gale capable of producing like a 15se secondond minimum period. uh uh swell to make it decently up into Hawaii and the US West Coast, which means seas of at least like 25 or 26 ft, preferably much more than that. Anyway, we'll put this into motion. That trough continues off to the east. This is that secondary gale we were talking about. The main storm system was under here back days ago.

[00:17:12]It's long gone. Now, you see after this, we get into Tuesday, the jet very split.

[00:17:18]There's is a a lot of energy running the northern branch of the jet, but it didn't it doesn't do anything really for gale development. It's all in the southern branch. See the southern branch splitting way south. A lot of this blue dead air here that just supports high pressure and the jet actually crashing into Antarctica here over the southeast Pacific. None of this good for swell production. You see the split flow.

[00:17:42]Another the opposite of a trough is a ridge, the jet pushing south. So that happens. We're into Thursday now and Friday. There is a bit of a trough there, but it doesn't have enough winds pushing up into to do very much. And then where are we? We're into Sunday.

[00:18:01]Maybe something here. Where are we?

[00:18:04]We're 180 hours out. But all in all, if you want a great example of a very split jetream over the Pacific, this is it right here. So, we kind of can gather what the forecast for the next week's going to look like. That said, it takes winds blowing on the ocean surface to generate seas. So, let's go see what is going on. Here is our current gale southeast of New Zealand with 45 knot winds aimed off to the northeast with a broader area of 30 to 35 knot winds. Not quite enough. I mean, 35 knot winds only gets you a 13se second period swell. We need 15 seconds. This might do it right here. Another little low pressure here with 30 barely 35 kn winds in the upper reaches of the central sa uh south Pacific. That probably not doing a whole lot and if anything it looks like it's falling south. Our main gale as we get into Monday starts fading out. Now the models have been suggesting this the energy that was here being transferred up into this cutoff low. In fact, this version of the models 18Z run shows 40 knot winds aimed off to the northeast on Wednesday the 22nd, lifting northeast, even building to 45 knots. And then, oh, you see this broad complex gale starting to set up in the Tasmin Sea. That of course probably targeting Fiji. Put that into motion. You see this system fading out. This Tasmin C1 fading out.

[00:19:30]Secondary energy maybe doing something here. Fiji right there. Not very far away. What is that? One, two. That's about 1,200 nautical miles. So, every 10 degrees to 600 nautical miles going north south. So, I'll say 1,200 nautical miles and then crashing into New Zealand. We have a broad fetch here. All aimed due south generated mainly by the integration of high pressure here and low pressure under New Zealand. So, nothing really there. some sort of something off of New Zealand, but again, just not enough winds blowing hard enough long enough. But we'll keep our eyes on that. We'll go look at the wave models when we get there to the forecast. So, here we go. Significant wave southeast of New Zealand at 31.4T fading out from there as pretty much expected. That's the end of our secondary gale. The tertiary gale, keep our eyes up here. We'll see if something develops from that. There we go. 31 ft seas. This would be on Wednesday morning, 26th of July or late Tuesday night in the Southern California. Swell window seas again 32.8 ft building to 34t again 34T. So maybe that's a bit of an upgrade also as we get into Thursday.

[00:20:49]Fetch developing south of Tasmania pushing 31 ft seas up through the Tasmin Sea fading to 28 feet. We're into almost Friday now. that secondary gale secondary gale develops with 20 I'll say 20 well let's see 20 22 24 26 27 ft seas right there building to 28 ft 35t is it free and clear relative to Fiji I would say just just for a nanocond there before it crashes behind the boot hill he boot heel here and becomes shadowed we're into Sunday now. And where are we?

[00:21:31]100 and there we go. 180 hours out.

[00:21:34]Yeah, tiny area. 26 28 foot seas, but not really big enough. Maybe Hawai for certainly for Tahiti and maybe some energy for Hawaii, but that's still a week out and kind of a reach. All right, moving off to the forecast for the North Pacific. Another system developing down here. This is probably the highlight of whatever it's going to be. I don't even know what its name is. 34 foot seas. I don't think it has a name yet because it's probably only a depression or so. U building to 37t 40 foot. Now all this we're out 90 hours. I don't believe the GFS model that far out on tropical systems. They just I mean I think this is a good generalized idea of what's going to happen. Also notice something here off the Philippines as well. um lifting off to the north, not recurving.

[00:22:24]Another system theoretically 168 hours out beyond that. So tropics definitely picking up warmer waters off in this area fueled by El Nino with decreased trades and decreased shear.

[00:22:40]All that is good to support and and lower the normal pressure. All good for supporting tropical storm development.

[00:22:48]the North Atlantic put this into motion.

[00:22:51]We're looking for anything and I wouldn't be expecting a whole lot here.

[00:22:57]We're out to Friday, Saturday the 25th of July, Sunday, and there we are 180 hours out and really nothing on the forecast and nothing really expected to the South Atlantic again. Looking for some solid swell. There we go. But what do we have?

[00:23:18]32 ft seas building mainly aimed off to the east, but sideband swell up into Africa. What is that? That's only 10 20°. So 1,200 nautical miles. Entirely possible that swell could result from this pushing off to the east. Sort of look to see if you get any kind of a swell front pushing up there. Most of it out here. H you see this kind of falling south pattern. We'll put that back in.

[00:23:47]But that suggests high pressure in this region. Yeah, not really doing a whole lot. We're into Sunday and there we are 180 hours out. So maybe some hope for South Africa, but nothing super impressive. Then finally, the Indian Ocean, the forecast, we have 30 foot seas forecast like on Monday targeting southwestern Australia primarily. You see some energy pushing into coast there. So we get in late Tuesday and Wednesday. Here's that system pushing under South Africa, falling more southeast, almost crashing into the ice sheet, the Antarctic ice sheet there. Never a particularly great or encouraging sign. Something trying to organize up here, but just not really doing it. All in all, pretty quiet pattern for the Indian Ocean. Not unexpected during El Nino years. The Pacific takes over the Indian Ocean. in the Atlantic kind of are less productive than normal. The the flip happens during leninia years when you have leninia in the Pacific. Lower pressure sets up in the Atlantic and the Indian oceans and they just pump. So, uh the Pacific basin looks like it's getting its chance and everyone else is going to suffer unfortunately.

[00:25:04]Local wind forecast for California right here, Hawaii over here, there's the Hawaiian Islands. This would be the Baja border, that little black line there.

[00:25:13]Southern California, Point Conception under the tag. Monterey Bay, uh, San Francisco Bay and the Oregon California border. High pressure in the Gulf of Alaska, ridging into the coast producing a bit of a gradient. Northwest winds 20 to barely 25 knots. But all along the California coast, northwest winds 10 knots.

[00:25:34]Alita here pushing off to the northwest. You can't really tell what the winds are doing. We got another model we can look at it, but it is tropical storm force and fading though, right? You know, pretty close off of point conception as we get into Tuesday. It's going to be interesting to see how much humidity and tropical moisture. I mean, no direct tropical moisture is forecast, but humidity might uh build over central California. The next system theoretically behind that pushing more to the west northwest. The traditional track uh looks like bound for some point north of Hawaii. Oh yeah, I'm supposed to be looking at the Let's go back here.

[00:26:14]Local winds on Wednesday. Light wind regime. I mean, it's pretty much been a light wind regime. Trades 15 knots for the Hawaiian Islands. Thursday, same sort of deal, though. High pressure, you get the sense, is going to start building in on Thursday for California.

[00:26:28]Trades 15 plus knots for the Hawaiian Islands. So we get into Friday, 15 knot winds start building along the north and central California coast. Trades almost 20 knots for the Hawaiian Islands.

[00:26:40]Saturday, same thing. 15 to 20 knots down north and central California coast.

[00:26:45]Not enough to probably create major upwelling, at least not yet. So water temperatures probably still being pretty nice. Trades 15 20 knots for the Hawaiian Islands on Saturday. Sunday, you notice the second system pushing north of the Hawaiian Islands. That is a good thing. High pressure trying to ridge stronger into the California coast. Northwest winds 20 knots. It'll be uh lesser closer to the coast. And then as we get into late Sunday and Monday, more of the same. So all in all, a generally innocuous pattern till we get to next weekend. Then northwest winds set up for the north and central California coast and maybe surf from the system relative to Hawaii, but we'll have to keep our eyes on it. Again, I don't necessarily trust the GFS model on tropical storm development.

[00:27:34]The Google deep mine forecast is pretty good for Hawai for tropical activity.

[00:27:40]Here we go. Oh, this is Falsto now.

[00:27:43]Okay, you see it here. Max wind speeds 35 knots. So, it's tropical storm force.

[00:27:49]And then we have Lita here. 51 knot winds. Cate Oh, category zero. Yeah, sure enough. Category zero. Tropical storm. All right. So, rather than me talk about this, I'm just going to put it into motion. We might stop if Okay.

[00:28:03]Bingo. Look at that. A category 1 61 knots. I thought it was Oh, the 67 knots. There we go. Yeah. 65 knots is minimum hurricane force. Alita, low pressure and just fading. You see the moisture field not even coming close to California. Then we roll this out.

[00:28:21]Category two storm down to category one.

[00:28:25]there. You can just see it play out. Oh, and it's moving off the charts.

[00:28:30]Okay, we'll put this back in motion for the folks in Hawaii. You can see category one. Where are we now? We're into Saturday the 25th of July. Category one. This has a Oh, and now it's not even hurricane force or it's some sort of tropical storm. The the circles here.

[00:28:49]I'll pause this for the moment here. The circles. Let's see. Okay, so we're at category 0 51 knots pushing Let's go back just a little bit here just to see where are we? Oh yeah, pushing north of the Hawaiian Islands. The circles are all the different positions. You can see the the specs on wind strength and everything there. Uh a pretty diverse field. We're out to Wednesday the 29th of July, which is what's that 10 days from now. So, that's when this system should make its closest approach to the Hawaiian Islands and uh we'll just we'll just let it run on out and then passing the Hawaiian Islands after that.

[00:29:35]All right, let's do a quick check uh surf forecast for a couple locations.

[00:29:39]Columbia River, Columbia River, the Pacific Northwest there. Surf heights pretty much the whole way through the week. 2 and 1/2 ft, maybe up to 3 feet on Friday, then fading some from there with a light wind regime. Swell heights 3 feet at 8 seconds on Monday, 2 and 1/2 at 7 to 8 on Tuesday, building up to 3 and 1/2 ft at 8 to 9 seconds on Friday.

[00:30:05]All this just local wind swell down to the Santa Cruz area. Surf heights on Tuesday, building to three and a half feet, then fading from there. 2 and 1/2 ft on Thursday, three feet on Friday, and kind of holding in that range the whole way out. All this mixture of tropical energy and southern hemi energy. Let's go look at these. And you notice the wind speeds, not too bad at all. Now, we'll see how well this actually does here. This is tropical swell here. 2.9 ft at 12 seconds. This is on Tuesday. Fading some southern hemisell. This is from the central south Pacific gale building into about 2 feet at 2.1 ft at 13 to 14 seconds. It'll actually be in here on Wednesday. It's just not as big as the whatever the tropical swell is. And then there is longer period swell forecast showing up here Saturday and Sunday. It doesn't even show on the chart. This is from the system that passed the with 52 foot seas passing under New Zealand to San Diego. A little bit better exposure here, but hard to say. 3 and 1/2t surf Sunday, Monday fading Tuesday, 3 to 3 1/2 ft, 4 to 4 1/2 ft. Thursday and Friday fading from there. Let's go look at swell period. All this now is showing basically tropical swell. 2 feet at 10 seconds, 2 and 1/2 ft at 14 seconds. That is the uh now that is the uh central south Pacific swell but then it gets taken over supposedly by tropical swell at 3 and 12 ft at 13 seconds and buried under all that once you get out here is longer period like 22 sec 1 ft at 22 second period uh New Zealand swell then over to Aahu. Now this is all central south Pacific swell foot 4 foot surf pretty much Monday Tuesday fading Wednesday and fading out through the week. You see the trades here at 15 ma basically 20 knots the whole way through. And let's see how this part of the two three feet at 14 seconds. Yeah, this is all the the central south Pacific swell fading out into about Thursday. A little bit of lingering energy. Um, the New Zealand swell, you see bits and pieces of it here. 1.6 ft at 18 seconds.

[00:32:36]Uh, 2 feet at 17 seconds, 2.2 feet at 16 seconds. So, swell for the weekend next weekend from the southern hemi and of course swell all during the week for the Hawaiian Islands. We have reached the midpoint in the video and now we are going to go take a look at the long-term outlook. We're going to examine the two major weather oscillations that affect the potential for swell development.

[00:33:00]That is the MJO, the Madden Julian oscillation, and ENSO, the El Nino Southern Oscillation.

[00:33:07]We're going to start by examining trade wids along the equatorial Pacific. Why would we do that? We're looking for signs of the MJO, the Madden Julian oscillation. There are two phases to it, the active phase and the inactive phase.

[00:33:20]The active phase is our friend. It is like a low pressure system. It takes warm moist air draws it up into the upper reaches of the atmosphere. That warm moist air adds energy to the jetream making for a stronger jetream.

[00:33:32]The stronger the jet, the more capable is at digging out troughs and therefore supporting gale development. The inactive phase of the MJO is like a high-pressure system. It is falling dry air. It creates falling dry air that steals energy from the jetream making the jetream split and weak and not so supportive of gale development. sort of like what is happening or what at least appears to be happening in the South Pacific right now. The there are the two phases of the MJO rotate around the planet west to east. The active phase oh on the equator the active phase on one side of the planet inactive phase on the other. When the active phase is pushing west to east on the equator across the Pacific because it is that does that low pressure thing that feeds energy to the jetream. It helps feed the jetream and and supporting gale development. Takes about four to five weeks for the active phase to make it across the Pacific. So you'll notice you get these periods where the swells just seem to pump.

[00:34:30]There's lots of storms. Then you go for a four-week period and there's literally nothing. It's like a lake. Then all of a sudden it magically picks up again and then the storm machine's back on. All right. So we can examine the trade winds to get a sense of what the MJO is doing because trade winds are generated by high pressure. They blow from east to west. If the active phase of the MJO is coming across the equatorial Pacific and it is low pressure, well those trade winds don't they're not as strong as they normally would be or in fact they might even die or they might even reverse direction. So, we can tell all that by looking here at data from the TAO buoyer array. Series of buoys.

[00:35:11]Here's the equator. Strong across the equator. East Pacific here to West Pacific. Again, the equator date line right there. New Guinea right there.

[00:35:18]We're just looking at the arrows and they give us a sense of what the trade winds are doing out of the east. Pretty strong. The longer the arrow, the stronger the winds till you get to about a point south of Hawaii and then the trades just basically are calm. There are no trades. Then you get this kind of mixed pattern where it's west winds blowing north of the equator, south winds south of the equator. So kind of a a mixed bag here.

[00:35:45]We're not quite sure what is going on, but it that it doesn't matter as much as the anomalies, the the wind direction and speed difference from normal for this time of year. So in the East Pacific, again, I'm just looking at the arrows. The winds are it's kind of hard to tell because there's not a lot of directional data here, but it looks like it's pretty calm. But then look at this.

[00:36:07]The arrows actually turning from the west. So westerly anomalies when you get 120 is south of California on the equator. West over the central Pacific, stronger west both north and south of the equator over the date line and pretty solidly west the whole way over the rest of the Pacific. So all in all, this leads this would could lead one to believe that the active phase of the MJO is in control. But when you have this large of an area, and if you've been following this channel for any length of time, you know that for weeks now, we've had westerly anomalies, that strongly suggests some other form of trop tropical variability is taking over the equatorial Pacific. And drum roll, can you guess what that might be? Yes, El Nino.

[00:36:55]What have zonal wind anomalies been doing for the past five days? All right, this chart shows you the past five days, but it is for the whole planet. South America there, Central America there, New Guinea there, zero is the equator, 180 is the date line. So, we're really looking here in the the western Pacific.

[00:37:14]I'd say from 170 west over to as far as you can go, 125 east, 5 degrees north and south of the equator. you get westerly anomalies there or out and out west winds that sets water in motion and normally trades are blowing the opposite from east to west like during a leninia year nuking trades take all the warm water ball it up right here but then when trades finally relax or you get these west anomalies warm water that's normally piled up here slloshes to the east in what's known as a Kelvin wave a ball of warm water that is just travels right on the equator 5 degrees north and south of the equator and is held the it's under the ocean surface but not too deep held in place by the thermocline and that ball of warm water takes about four months to make its way from the west Pacific to the east Pacific. If you get multiple strong active phases of the MJO, the active phase of the MJO, they create multiple uh Kelvin waves. Those Kelvin waves eventually start piling up warm water here off of Ecuador and the Galopagos, which is normally where you have much colder than normal water because trades are normally stronger there, creating upwelling. And all of a sudden, you get this pool of warm water building up off of South America. That is the hallmark of El Nino. Right now, we are in a massive longunning a what appears to be the active phase of the MJO, but it's not. It's just a major westerly wind burst. All right, 13th of July, westerly anomalies in the Kelvin wave generation areas. Same on the 14th, 15th, 16th, and 17th, even more focused right on the equator. And not only extending from the West Pacific, but almost the whole way to well, the Gopagos are somewhere like right around there. So, rather impressive, I'll call it a fetch of westerly anomalies.

[00:39:10]What is the forecast for the next two weeks? We're going to start by looking at outgoing longwave radiation. OLR.

[00:39:15]What does that mean? Just means cloud cover. Is there more or less cloud cover than normal? Why would that matter?

[00:39:21]Well, the active phase of the MJO takes warm moist air, lifts it up into the atmosphere that eventually up at jetream level will hit much cooler than normal air and condense and form clouds. The active phase, because it persists for weeks, not a day or so, will create more cloud cover than normal. Now, the inactive phase does the exact opposite.

[00:39:43]It's falling dry air. You get cloud-free skies, more sunlight bouncing off the ocean surface, outgoing longwave radiation. So the oranges and yellows here, positive outgoing longwave radiation, meaning less clouds than normal. The blues, so this would be the inactive phase. The blues would be the active phase, more clouds than normal.

[00:40:05]Right? South America, Central America, New Guinea, equator right there, date line right there, Kelvin wave generation area right here. Here it looks like the inactive phase of the MJO is moving into the far west Pacific. The active phase is over the C Central America Galopagos area. The inactive phase building 5 days from now, 10 days from now and then maybe fading a little bit two weeks from now, 15 days from now. This for the statistic model, the dynamic model basically suggesting the same thing. And then you go, well, what's that have to do with El Nino? And I would go if your El Nino is strong enough the MJO doesn't matter. And that's what we're going to find out. So this app appears to show that the inactive phase of the MJO again this is the GFS model now. So we have two models statistic model and a dynamic model. Both suggesting inactive phase of the MJO setting up. Would that kill the westerly anomalies? Well, we're going to find out. But first, let's just do a quick de dive here. These are the phase diagrams for the same two models. The statistic model, dynamic model. These just show where the active phase is and how strong it is. The MJO moves from west to east from the Indian Ocean to the maritime continent over the West Pacific to the East Pacific over the Atlantic under the United States.

[00:41:30]Remember, it's on the equator over to Africa and then back round again. You can see the past track here. The fir this circle is the circle of death. The further the the heavy dot is where the active phase is. So in the Atlantic almost heading over Africa. The further the heavy dot is there from this circle, the stronger the MJO is. So a modest active phase of the MJO and one, two, three members suggesting active phase over in the Indian Ocean two weeks from now. The dynamic model pretty much showing the same thing with the active phase just incredibly weak.

[00:42:11]All right, what is the forecast? So the these are pretty interesting charts.

[00:42:15]These show you the west or east anomalies over the entire planet. All right, and over time starting June 19th, we are July 19th. So a month worth of Heincast data. And then the two week GFS model down below. Date line runs right up the middle. Far West Pacific starts at 125 east. The reds and yellows are the relative strength of westerly anomalies. The blues have their scale and they are easterly anomalies. You can see that for the entire month and actually I'm just going to say it in May, was it March 18th? No, it was May 18th. this westerly wind burst started and you can see it's been nonstop westerly winds for the entire month at times pretty strong. These are westerly anomalies and the forecast for the next two weeks is basically unchanged. Now this chart here shows the actual these are not you know these are anomalies but this shows actual west winds over the date line pretty much nonstop through the next twoe period. So, a pretty impressive setup. Let's go look at the ECMWF, the European model, and it's showing basically the same thing. If nothing else, stronger still westerly anomalies with westerly anomalies, the holding the whole way through. So, I'll I'll just go back and forth here real quick. Hopefully, this will line up.

[00:43:43]There you go. There's the GFS, and now here's the CMWF. Then, we can get fancy.

[00:43:48]We can go to the the AI GFS model. This goes out even further. This goes out four weeks and you see major westerly wind burst forecast for the next two weeks and still some version of westerly anomalies holding with pure west winds into about the end of July, early August and then we'll go to the ECMWF AI version of that model as well and basically showing the same thing. So all in all super impressive. Then we go to the CFS model. Another dynamic model optimized for long-term outlook. It's basically showing the same thing going one, two, three, four weeks out. Super strong westerly anomalies. This shows just like we saw on the outgoing longwave radiation. The active phase solid contour here very weak. But over in the east Pacific, it does not show the inactive phase over here, but it does show it popping up two weeks over in the same area. So one can assume it's making it they make a transit from this direction across. In fact you can see it there here. But what we do see is the active phase has steadily been and the inactive phase have steadily been getting weaker because some other mode of tropical variability is taking over.

[00:45:08]And then we go to the CFS model that goes out uh three months. Okay. Past performance down here the forecast up here. Same deal.

[00:45:19]Date line runs right up the middle of the chart. Far West Pacific starts 125 east. So right here, the yellows and reds, westerly anomalies. So here we go.

[00:45:28]May 18th, this westerly, I called it a westerly wind burst, but you can see it just doesn't stop. And the forecast suggests it just building and getting stronger and stronger and stronger the whole way through the model run. This is a clear sign of El Nino. will overlay the MJO chart here. All right, dotted contours, inactive phase, solid contours, active phase, and you go, okay, here is our inactive phase right here. Here's our active phase pushing out. But isn't the inactive phase supposed to shut down westerly anomalies? I would say yes, in a normal situation, that would be true. But the MJO is one of several forms of tropical variability. There's, you know, there's equatorial ropies waves, there's equatorial or atmospheric Kelvin waves, and there's the MJO, and then there's ENSO El Nino. This it's showing active phases, but I think at best they are bit players in the scene now. Okay, because I'm going to overlay the lowass filter. And here really screams what's going on. This solid contour is a low pressure bias that was over the maritime continent back in March. It fully moved over the date line in June and with one contour. Then a second June 10th, let's say, a third on July 8th, and now a fourth is forecast late July, a fifth in late August, a sixth in late September, and yesterday the chart was actually showing a seventh contour. Thank you, Jake, for pointing that out to me. I appreciate it. Um, so this is the other form of tropical variability that is basically trumping the MJO completely. The MJ is still there, but it's just basically a bit player. The low pressure bias is driving everything. And that's why you have this persistent westerly anomaly pattern that's just building because you have lower and lower pressure building over the date line. What's happening is that sucking warm moist into like a chimney.

[00:47:52]They call this the Walker circulation.

[00:47:54]It's a chain ch a change in the Walker circulation. Normally this low pressure bias is over here, but during Al Nino it moves over the date line and you get high pressure bias over the Atlantic and over the maritime continent. So you have falling air on the sides coming into the Pacific from across the Atlantic and across the Indian Ocean and then rising over the date line. that creates easterly trades over the Galopagos, westerly trades if you will, or westerly anomalies over the West Pacific. They all meet in some center point and then head up from there. And that is the uh generating machine for what will be massive winter storms once we get into win late fall and winter months.

[00:48:42]Subsurface water temperatures. Why do I care about this? Well, if we talk if the MJO creates westerly anomalies and those westerly anomalies take warm water from the west Pacific and push it east across the equator, then we can watch the develop and they create a Kelvin wave.

[00:48:59]Then we can watch the movement of those Kelvin waves across the Pacific Ocean.

[00:49:03]So, we're looking at data from the TAO buoy array. Again, the series of buoys strung across the equator. These are the anchor lines. The X's are sensors on those anchor lines. They uh and then use a model to fill in the gaps. They track the movement of warm water. So the 20 what is this? The 20 the 30 degree ism.

[00:49:22]Okay. Last week it was at 160 or maybe even 162. Leading edge is moving east meaning this water is moving east. The 29 degree is at 143. It is at 140 this month. The 28 degree is at 120. So it's holding about still. the 24° is them.

[00:49:43]Now, at one point it was down to 79 m deep. It has gotten a little bit shallower, suggesting I think it's Kelvin wave number three has probably done the most of its eruption now. But we know that Kelvin wave number four is back filling in behind that and maybe even a Kelvin wave number five. These are actual water temperatures. It doesn't matter as much as the anomalies.

[00:50:07]The difference from normal for this time of year, four, five, 6, 7, 8° above normal centigrade temperatures. That would be, I don't know, 13 or 14° Fahrenheit above normal. This is a classic Kelvin wave. It's actually multiple Kelvin waves all bald baldled together because there's a steady flow of west of westerly winds blowing across the equator taking warm water that's here pushing it to depth that follows the thermic line. Where is the thermocline? Right right somewhere along here and then it starts rising. Okay.

[00:50:44]And you see the rising there but not as much rising because you're getting more and more volume here now building up off of Ecuador. So anyway, super impressive warm water pattern off of Ecuador. I mean, I'm I'm kind of understating it, but super super impressive amount of warm water off the coast there. All right. And then here's a higher res version of that. We have it in motion.

[00:51:09]You can see the area of coverage of warm water. You see warm water building in from the west. You can see this. So this is Kelvin wave three and Kelvin wave four back building into it. Um the size is if anything isn't getting smaller.

[00:51:27]It's growing in aerial coverage over time as this since what was it? May 18th. So May so we're into two months of non-stop westerly anomalies. Normally we get excited if you have three weeks of westerly anomalies but solid strong two months worth pretty much unprecedented ocean surface height. All right. Strip away the waves, wind waves, the tides.

[00:51:55]Is the height of the ocean higher or lower? Why do you care? What's that mean? Well, if you have warmer than normal water at depth, it expands. It pushes the displaces the ocean surface up. If you have um colder than normal temperatures, they contract. You get a divot on the ocean surface. Also, if you get westerly anomalies, well, they'll they'll help push warm water and have it pile up off of Ecuador. So this is these are not temperatures. This is the equator date line Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Central America, New Guinea there. These are centimeter anomalies. 20 cm anomalies. I don't know what that is like that much or something like that.

[00:52:36]But what that suggests and this is much larger pool of 20 cm anomalies than we had last week. Last week was pushed up a little bit closer to the coast. Again, this is where I'm getting I think Kelvin wave number three. It's discharging some. It's pushing up the coast now.

[00:52:53]It's built up into the I guess is the Gulf of uh uh um Mex, not the Gulf of Mexico, but the Gulf of Baja, right? And down the coast here. All right. And but you see the height building out here suggesting that more westerly anomalies are pushing warm water from the maritime continent in the West Pacific into this building pool in its back building if you will. Kind of like a backdraft.

[00:53:19]Okay? Meaning more warm water is coming.

[00:53:23]And then finally the historical view if you will west Pacific here, east Pacific here. last August, September, October, cold water, Kelvin waves off of uh u um the Gopagos, Equatorial Pacific. But then back in December, we got our first active phase of the MGO, created a Kelvin wave. The warm water has ma made it the whole way across and impacted Ecuador in like March. Another active phase in January produced another Kelvin wave. You see it working its way across and Kelvin wave 1 and two building a larger warm pool. Kelvin wave number three which we thought was massive back in March and we were our hair was on fire. You see the result of that here and much warmer 2 and a half degree.

[00:54:11]This is over a 300 meter depth started building off of Ecuador and that really is what set off the alarm bells that something was going on. Then you see a bit of a backtrack. Kelvin wave number four building in here. Okay. And then when I say Kelvin wave number five, it just I'm thinking that is starting like right in here. Look at the extent of the warm anomalies. Before we had something that was going out to 140 and it only lasted for a couple of weeks, but look at this. We're out to 160 west now. This will take this is probably at least two months worth of warm water sitting here in the pipe and westerly anomalies are still blowing still pumping warm water into this warm pool and are forecast to continue for the next 3 months. This is super super impressive from an El Nino development standpoint.

[00:55:10]Sea surface temperature anomalies. All right. If you ever want to see what an El Nino is like, and especially for mid July, this is like the classic picture of it. South America, Central America, New Guinea, the equator right here. Reds warmer than normal temperatures. I can't even quite pick it out, but this looks like 3 to 4° above normal along Peru, up over the Galopagos, and now building out to the west. And you see even significant warm temperatures almost out to the date line. The the Nino 1.2 region is right in this area. This is like the leading edge, the canary in the coal mine. The official El Nino monitoring region 5 degrees north and south of the equator from 120 west out to 170 west. So a box right there. The Kelvin wave pushes the whole way across the equator under the uh under the ocean surface, hits land here, erupts to the surface. What's left of the trade winds catch that warm water and start dragging it this way. This is clear evidence that we have a massive warm pool set that's subsurface here. And little bit at a time, it's leeching to the surface and will get dragged across the Pacific Ocean, raising temperatures in the official El Nino monitoring region, the Nino 3.4 region. The alternative sea surface temperature anomaly chart. This is just uses average takes the average of all the temperatures around the planet and then finds the deviation from it. You can still you can see clearly here the El Nino signal in this chart as well.

[00:56:55]Sea surface temperature trend for the past seven days. Warming off little warming off of Ecuador and out to the Gopagos Island. And then generalized warming from 140 out to 160. One would go, I almost expect to see more warming over this entire area. And then I go, well, it's only a 7-day trend. You don't get I mean you're not going to get shocking amounts of warming in seven days. So we can go look at the 15day trend and I go okay that's a little bit better. You see consistent warming and what's really interesting is you're getting considerable more warming out here than the official El Nino monitoring region. The equator right here 120 west out to 170. And that's exactly what one would expect if we were in a building El Nino situation.

[00:57:49]The temperature trend in the Nino 1.2 region right there by Ecuador and the Galopagos. Now, these are not official temperatures. They just give you an idea what the trend is. Current value plus 300 and 254 thousand 3° and 254,000 of a degree. 3 and a/4° above normal. That is incredibly warm water. Again, this is the canary in the coal mine. It is not corrected data, but it shows there is massive amounts of warm water in this area. Then we go to the official El Nino monitoring region. Again, this data is not corrected. The Nino 3.4 area, you see the same trend trend. Temperatures two effectively two degrees above normal, uncorrected. Probably want to whack about a a half a degree off that to take the global warming signal out.

[00:58:36]Now, let's get ourselves oriented.

[00:58:39]Normal is plus half a degree to minus half a degree. Weak El Nino, if this continues for like five consecutive three-month periods, is half a degree to one degree.

[00:58:51]Mod moderate El Nino is 1 to one and a half degrees. Strong El Nino is 1 and a half to two degrees and we're at two degrees, but again, you got to knock a half degree off. So officially we're moving into at least looking at this just eyeballing it the strong El Nino category. Now that's probably overstating it a little bit. The uh the official I'll call it official, it's semiofficial uh Nino 3.4 numbers corrected the RO and value. This is updated weekly for the latest week July 8th 1.3. So, still officially moderate El Nino, not strong, but we'll see what happens. You can see the steady upward trend. 2/10 of a degree, 2/10, 110th, 110th. I wouldn't be surprised if we get close to 1.5. So, right on the border of strong El Nino status a week or at very worst two weeks from now. And then the equatorial current. This just speaks to the effect of the uh westerly anomalies on the ocean surface current. Again, it it's pretty obvious what's going on here.

[01:00:03]Westerly anomalies. Uh this is um uh New Guinea and the far west Pacific here drawing any warm water out of here across the Pacific.

[01:00:15]Now there is a bit of a there are trade winds pushing this way. So it sort of splits it. You got but you don't you don't even really see an east wind headwind here at all except for right there. And then the current continues the whole way well in the north branch the whole way into Ecuador. We'll see if we can get it here. But you see yeah the east anomalies here. This is all pretty normal though. All in all, this for this time of year, very impressive current situation, and I expect it's only going to get worse as we get deeper into the fall months. What does the atmosphere think is going on? We look at this, the southern oscillation index, difference in pressure between Darwin, Australia, and Tahiti. Darwin over the maritime continent, Tahiti in the equatorialh central Pacific. When pressure is lower than normal, the index goes negative.

[01:01:13]Today's value minus 27.15.

[01:01:16]All right. Where have we been the past month? Wow. -40. That's incredibly low.

[01:01:21]- 38 - 44.81.

[01:01:26]You go down here. I mean, this is and since so in the past month we a month ago, we were -7.15.

[01:01:34]We've been just steadily crashing.

[01:01:36]Again, speaking to that low pressure bias that's developing over the date line. 30-day average takes the noise out of it. Minus 27.71.

[01:01:45]Where were we a month ago? Minus 20. So, it continues to fall. I mean, I don't know how much lower it can get.

[01:01:52]Normally, when I see a 30-day average at minus 27, I'm going that's a really, really strong active phase of the MJO.

[01:01:59]And when I see the 90-day average at minus15 or 17, I go, that's El Nino.

[01:02:05]Well, here's the 90-day average minus 19.78. Now, this has been a bit recalibrated and it seems to be a little bit overstated as compared to what it was. You know, I think they just recalibrated like a month ago. Well, a month ago it was -3.17, but all this has been recalculated. Either way, deeply in El Nino territory from an atmospheric perspective.

[01:02:31]And then here's the data graphed out.

[01:02:33]You can see it plain as day. So neutral is + 7 to minus7. The upward spikes are the inactive phase of the MJO. The downward spikes are the spikes are the active phase. You can see here we got to like where was this about April and we just boom active phase of the MJ.

[01:02:52]Another active phase of the MJO. Another active phase of the MJ. We're down at minus 29.6 according to this. And just I I don't know how much lower we can go.

[01:03:04]This is screaming El Nino. The raw sea surface temperature forecast from the uh CFS model for the official El Nino monitoring the Nino 3.4 region.

[01:03:16]Temperatures now forecast up to 4.25 degrees above normal. Now remember from half to one is weak El Nino. One to one and a half is moderate El Nino. One and a half to two is strong El Nino. Two to two and a half is super El Nino.

[01:03:37]We've never seen anything more than about a 2.5. We'll get into that in a minute. And you see where this is going.

[01:03:44]Total hair on fire. But again, the global warming signal has not been pulled out of this. So, let's go look at that version.

[01:03:52]Here is the relative corrected version.

[01:03:56]Even at that it shows temperatures now at 3.55 I want I don't want to say 3.6 six and again consider super El Nino is from two to two and a half and this is showing a whole degree above that. I mean this is multiple layers of magnitude stronger than the strongest El Nino that we've ever seen in basically recorded history at least in the scientific era. All right, so let's go dig into all this.

[01:04:29]All right, sea surface temperatures off of Ecuador. Sea surface temperature anomalies starting June 18th. We're just going to put this into motion so you can kind of see what's going on since this is really the birthplace. Wow, look at the buildup in coverage here of the warm anomalies. They continue to build and fairly dense. Where are we? We're going to I think the 18th. There we are.

[01:04:54]Current image. Now the gold standard, the two gold standard L super El Nino were the 8283 El Nino and the 97 El Nino. We do not have good data and like daily high-res satellite image from 82.

[01:05:10]The 82 El Nino was so extreme and caught everyone so offguard more or less. I mean, it wasn't really monitoring that closely back then, but that is what literally sent the US government and other governments to go set up the buoy array along the equator so they could start monitoring Kelvin waves and get a sense or a handle on what was going on and so they could prepare so the American public and and farmers and, you know, people in the mountains and people along the coast could prepare for El Nino and get some advanced forewarning.

[01:05:46]Now we have stuff like this. And here is the 97 El Nino start same time period.

[01:05:53]We're going for a month starting June 18th. We'll just put this into motion and then we'll look at them side by side. July 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th. You can sort of see it here. 17th, 18th. So there we are on July 18th of 97.

[01:06:10]Oh, and let me see if I can pull this over here. There we go. So you can see both of them. And then here we are on 2026.

[01:06:22]I mean, there we go. We'll get it even framed up better for you. Very comparable.

[01:06:30]Maybe a little bit more density, but on daytoday these things like I I'll go back. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four.

[01:06:40]It changes from day to day, but all in all, they look very similar.

[01:06:46]The outgoing longwave radiation anomalies. Okay, this is just showing you where there's more precipitation.

[01:06:53]This is not a forecast. This is actual what's happening on the ground. Blues, more clouds than normal, yellows and reds, dry. All right. Noticed. Oh, and the date line runs right up the middle of the chart. If we have a low pressure bias that's setting up on the date line that's taking warm moist air and lifting it aloft, you would see evidence of that by more cloud cover than normal. Sure enough, boom, there you go. I haven't seen And it's not only filling just the date line, it's going from 150 east the whole way to a point south of California. The entire tropical uh equatorial Pacific has more clouds over it than normal, suggesting warmer than normal water temperatures and an uplift pattern going on. Low pressure bias.

[01:07:39]Another confirmation that El Nino is not just a forecast. And again, some people have commented and said, "What took you so long to go call this a strong El Nino or even El Nino?" And it's because I have to see evidence of it in the atmosphere on the ocean surface. And it can't just be in the ocean. It has to be in the atmosphere. That is El Nino has is a coupled pattern between the ocean and the atmosphere. The atmosphere always lags. It's only really been in the past month or so that the southern oscillation index has begun to plummet.

[01:08:18]And while that's happening, the cloud cover is beginning to building up. And all this is now signs that something major is happening in the atmosphere.

[01:08:27]And you noticed it was only last week that I said looks like a strong El Nino.

[01:08:33]Not only is forecast, but it's actually happening now. And then this week's title much the same. But then many of you commented la in last week's video, but what about the PDO? used to say the P the PDIO the Pacific decodal oscillation used to say that if the PDO was negative there was you know it's very hard for El Nino to get going and it's very hard for El Nino to keep going and that the PDIO is what killed the 2023 El Nino and that is partially true.

[01:09:08]We're going to examine that right now.

[01:09:12]But let's do a little more comparison shopping first. All right, monthly relative sea surface temperature anomalies. Okay, what's going on at the surface and how does this stack up to every other El Nino that is strong that has come before it? In fact, let's go to one other chart before I even do this.

[01:09:32]This is a chart that no put together, the relative oceanic nino index. The short of it is it just says we are comparing sea surface temperatures for every El Nino that's they have reasonable data for which happens to start in 1950 and compare and we're take trying to take out the global warming signal because the planet's been getting warmer year after year after year. So, we can compare apples and oranges. And I'm not going to bore you with all the details, but they measure it in three month overlapping periods. December, January, February, March, April, May.

[01:10:08]You get the idea here. All right?

[01:10:10]Starting in 1950. And so, you go through this table, and I'm not going to bore you with all the details, but I looked for anything that would be considered significant El Ninos. And by that, a 3-month period of temperatures 2° or more. So, I got one in 65.

[01:10:31]I got one in 72.

[01:10:34]I got one. Where was the next one? Down here. We got the 82. 2.4, 2.5, 2.5 degrees. That's pretty much the highest we've ever seen in the modern era. And I I'm even suspect very much of some of these temperatures from the 50s. I I don't know that I believe it. Anyway, moving on. Then we didn't see anything until we got to 97.

[01:10:59]2.3 2.4 2.4. So peak of 2.4 versus 82 was 2.5. Then we come down. The next major event was 2015.

[01:11:11]And from a surf perspective, I don't remember it being anything close to 97.

[01:11:16]It was actually pretty much of a let down. 2.2 2.3 2.4°. 4 degrees and then since then nothing. And according to the threemonly view, we're only at half a degree in 2026.

[01:11:31]So then I go, okay, I'm going to build my own chart to compare this, but I'm not going to use the threemonth period because they give us the data weekly, but I go, well, I'm not going to do that. That's too much noise. I'll do it monthly and see how we compare. So sure enough, 82 comes out on top here. And then 97 right there. That's the blue. I got 2015 in here, but again, from a surf perspective, I don't remember it being nearly as impressive. And then we got a couple of others here. So 57, 65, 72.

[01:12:03]You can look, but you can see the black line is where we are using LA June's data. And then let me distill that down one more. Then let's just pull out 97 and 82 and then 2026. You can see we're midline in between the two of them. In fact, 97 peaked out early. 82 had a couple of little hiccups along the way before it finally peaked in month 13.

[01:12:32]I'll call that that's January of 83 actually. But you get the idea. We are completely in the ballpark with all these other systems. And this is corrected data too that uh the global warm warming signal taken out we are on par with the two major strongest El Nino in modern scientific history. So next I go all right let's go see what the PDIO was doing. And for those of you that don't know what the PDIO, the Pacific decodal oscillation, it's basically like a long running El Nino or L'inia. That is you can go if you look at this you there's literally 30 days 30 years sorry 30 year cycles of where in general you're in like a longunning lenia and then you switch to a longunning El Nino.

[01:13:25]So we were in the warm phase, the El Nino phase of the PDO until uh the big El Nino of 97. It created so much discharge, so much heat venting off from the planet. It sent us into a leninia that we have not recovered from yet. So we are still officially in the cool phase of the PDO. And then you go that does not mean you cannot have el ninos or linas during the cool phase. They're just not typically as strong or as prevalent. All right. So let's go examine a few of these. So this is the uh 1957 during when the 1957 El Nino with two degree above normal anomalies. And here is the PDO index. It was warm. All right, we're just going to step through a couple of these. Then here was the uh 65 El Nino. It was warm but not I mean just barely and it really didn't get going till August. Keep that in mind. Then we get to the 72 El Nino.

[01:14:32]It actually was cold or just barely warm. So okay. So let's state another point here. The PDO lags and so that is El Nino gets going. It has to get into the atmosphere and then it drags the PDO up or down with it. In this case, El Nino would drag it up. That's exactly what this looks like is here. Wasn't until August and then it just barely reached, you know, what is that a 0.25 of whatever the index is before it crashed again. So, here is one instance and I I'll just let lead the story here.

[01:15:10]It's the only instance of an El Nino, at least an El Nino of two degrees, two degrees sea surface temperature anomalies or more that uh occurred during a negative PDO. Let's keep going.

[01:15:23]Then we go to 82 El Nino. Well, we were kind of neutral and then well, maybe it dragged it warm. Hard to say. Then we go out to the 91 El Nino. Same sort of deal. Negative and then it got dragged positive. not until August of 91. And then you get to the 97 El Nino. Now, it was perfectly in phase. Okay. PDIO was warm. The El Nino was nuts. And when it finally crashed, it dragged the PDO down with it. And it's like we haven't even recovered since what, nearly 30 years later. Uh, one more. What do we got?

[01:16:01]2015. Yes, we were. The PDO was warm.

[01:16:06]Yes, I know. I just said it. We haven't recovered from it since, but if you actually go look at the data, and maybe I'll pull it up here in a second, you can see, but from the purposes of an El Nino, the El Nino was in sync with a warm PDO during that year or two period.

[01:16:23]And so that probably helped it do as well as it did. And then finally, here is our current PDO. Now, the time scale is not the same. It's just J all these started in January. This goes to June. We're at like minus 1.34 I think for this month. What will happen? So I'd talked about El Nino or or the PDIO lags behind El Nino. But then there is a PDIO model. It actually is the CFS version two model. The same model that's predicting El Nino and it's showing what its forecast has been from February 2025. Here's its forecast. Here's what actually happened. The red line is the forecast. And you can see as we get into February this year, uh these are the actuals and here's the forecast. But here's the forecast consistently showing somewhere around minus half to maybe minus well minus a half during 2026. And that's same there. This one was a little lower. Notice so every two months keeps nudging the forecast up a little. So, what does that mean? Is this suggesting that maybe we will be in a negative PDIO during this El Nino? Let's talk about that. So, we have an El Nino forecast with temperatures up to Oh, actually, let me go pull it up here. The relative forecast for 3 months is forecast at 3.275 degrees. The highest we've ever seen for a threemonth El Nino is 2.5 during the 82 El Nino. So we're talking and again this is forecast at 3.275 7/10en of a degree 3/4 of a degree above the highest we've ever seen. Several of you have made comments in on the video down below say if we get what is forecast this is not a good thing. Why are you so excited about it? And you know, from a surf perspective, I'm excited, but let's get real. There's only so much an El Nino can do. And then once it goes over some magic line, it just turns into this giant windb blown mess. You get howling wind, you get rain, the coast is a mess, or even in the mountains, you start getting landslides and flooding uh inland. You get, yes, you can get a lot of snow in the Sierra, but you also can get very high sneers atmospheric river event or a pineapple express if you're old school and that tends to push snow levels very high and that can just make a mess of things in the mountains. Um and and then not even counting like the folks that live on the coast, their their homes can get destroyed by waves or businesses washed in by floods. I mean, and then the folks in the inland southwest like Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, they haven't seen a drop of rain or not much rain in a very long time. You can look on the internet and see all the videos about Lake Me and the Hoover Dam and what's going on there. They are at historically low levels. They are scrambling trying to figure out how to keep enough water running through the dam to generate electricity so that people have power andor drinking water. And they're literally I think I saw an article even yesterday that they're talking about paying people not to use water to financially incentivize them. Now again, you you can have your comments about that. I I don't take a position on any of it. All I'm saying is those folks desperately need water. Regarding the PDO, there is some discussion that a negative PDO like what we have and an El Nino, it help it not helps but it will limit how far the water or the storm track or the jetream will push in land and provide meaningful rainfall.

[01:20:37]especially that is meaningful relative to New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Colorado, that whole basin there that is so dry.

[01:20:49]The flip side on all this is the sea surface temperatures are forecast so ridiculously high that maybe a negative PDO would be enough to save us from catastrophe and just put us into the 97 or 82 El Nino category. Knock the sea surface temperatures down 3/4 of a degree. Now, let's be clear. I've been watching the models every single day as I know a bunch of you are. Thank you again, Jake, for uh keeping me on my toes and feeding me information. Um the temperatures keep climbing up on the model. Not a lot, maybe a tenth of a degree, you know, 50100s of a degree, but they have not backed off at all.

[01:21:44]Normally by mid July it's like you know something's happened. It's all falling apart. But no, I'm not seeing that happening. The models aren't saying it.

[01:21:55]It just keep the forecast just keeps coming on and building stronger and stronger. I'm kind of thinking this negative PDO thing maybe would be a bit bit of a blessing in disguise and it might help take some of the edge off what appears to be an insane El Nino developing. That said, the very model that is forecast these insane temperatures, the CFS version two model, and I'm just using that as example. I don't know what's going on with the ECMWF and a whole bunch of others. But it is also the same model that is predicting this negative PDO and it has to have figured into its calculation, oh we are in a negative PDO. So that's going to have some impact on El Nino.

[01:22:41]And even at that, I'm going to tell you you're going to get 3.25 or was it 3.275 degree temperature anomalies above normal in the Nino 3.4 for region. So, you can kind of see the dilemma. How do you reason your way out of this? I don't know. I mean, I I'll say the models tend to overhype everything. I don't want to see 3.275 degree above normal temperature anomalies in the Nino 3.4 region. I'd be perfectly happy with something in the twoderee range. You know, strong El Nino, weak super. From a surf perspective, that would be good. From a rain perspective, I want to see rain into the Southwest. Desperately want to see that. And no matter how we whatever it takes to get that, California is going to pay a price to help that happen. But I'm looking at the bigger picture. I'm looking at everyone at least in the United States, you know, and we have to give and take a little bit. So, you know, California loses a little so that the Colorado basin can get something. That's the way I'm rationalizing it in your mo in my mind.

[01:23:53]Anyway, that's kind of the situation.

[01:23:55]I'm not placing value judgments on anything. I'm not even sticking a stake in the sand and saying here's what I think the temperatures are going to the sea surface temperature anomalies are going to be when we peak out or what the threemonth numbers will be. But at this point in time, it seems like we are very very much on track for a super El Nino in the league of 82 or 97, if not maybe something more. I just I can't I don't want to think about that really because I don't think that would be a good thing for anybody. All right, on a better note, there is surf on the way. On a on a happier note, there is a swell that pushed under New Zealand. Swell is pushing up towards California. Swell is impacting the Hawaiian Islands from Migail in the central south Pacific. So that is good. Nothing really on the forecast. We do have a lot of tropical activity for sure. Swell will ultimately result for Hawaii and California from this. We are still in July. We're not even getting warmed up. The first swell I've ever seen from a extrropical storm recurving in the North Pacific that was El Nino induced was I think it was like August 15th or August 18th. We still have a month to go before quote unquote the impacts from El Nino can be seen from a surfing perspective. Um, so we got to give it a little time, but it it is kind of amazing to watch this El Nino evolve a in the modern age when we have all kinds of tools to monitor every little bit of it. So, uh, come along with me next week as we continue to dig into the details and see how this evolves. If you enjoyed the video, please give us a thumb up. Thumbs up if you haven't subscribed and we're getting really close to the 10,000 subscriber mark. Uh click click uh click the storm surf icon down in the lower right hand corner of your screen and get signed up to be subscribed there. Uh comments or questions, I'm sure you're going to have some after this video. Uh write them up down below. We're going to try to respond to everything, but there it keeps getting more and more of them and it to get gets a lot harder to answer all of them. And certainly thank you so much for your generous contributions to the cause. It is much appreciated. Thank you again and we will do this again next week. Same channel, same time, same channel. Thanks so much for watching.

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