Entering the first week of June and we still are “up in the air” (isn’t all weather) about a consistent pattern over North America. We have seen heat, cold, extreme precipitation and minor dryness, but we haven’t seen it sustained for more than a week to ten days.
Part of the reason we may not be seeing a lot of heat could be because of the abundant soil moisture across the Lower 48. It has been shown that one of the ways hot spells can get a foothold is with a developing or ongoing drought, further reinforcing the he the old saying, “dry begets dry”.
It’s for this reason that I’m confident in saying (and I don’t do this often) that I don’t believe we will see extreme, sustained heat in the month of June across the Lower 48.
With that out of the way, what will we see?
It appears that volatility is the name of the game in the coming weeks. Current ENSO signals remain neutral to slightly positive with no clear signal whether we are heading towards an El Nino or La Nada (neutral conditions) in second half of the year.
Rolling into the summer months, absent of any forcing from stratospheric warming, we look to our old friend the Madden-Julian Oscillation for guidance and insight into the long range forecast for North America.
Latest analysis shows the MJO centered squarely across the Indian Ocean. Projections from the latest CFS model show it will migrate over the Maritime Continent and Pacific into early June and then into South America by mid-June. More importantly, while the amplitude of the MJO remains high across the Indian Ocean, it is projected to dampen by the time it reaches South America. Here again, the signal remains weak with respect to forcing across North America.
There are times when we have to rely on persistence in long range forecasts, and it appears that this upcoming 20 day period is a prime example. While we are reluctant to take positions exploiting extreme warm and cold, we are finding success in timing the switch from below normal temperatures to above. Note in the following images how the temperatures are projected to flip in a week’s time from early to mid-June across the United States. Seems that the weather is almost on a cadence for the upcoming two weeks – something that we can clearly sink our teeth into.
