Because of the wild variation and swings month-by-month across the Lower 48, November has been a tough call as to what we can expect.

While the heart of summer was cool and wet for a large swathe of the country, both spring and fall has seen wild swings with a hot West, cool East then cool West, hot East with extremes in rainfall on both ends of the ledger.

For Texas and Oklahoma, a record wet spring gave way to renewed drought conditions June-August but now, we have a life-threatening flood situation currently unfolding.

The Great Lakes and Northeast was record warm in September and now it’s colder than normal with the potential for a 2nd major cold trough coming down this month which could make for an even colder than normal October overall. A cool Northwest in September has given way to a warm October.

The models really have been hopeless and bias warm in recent months, struggling to catch any sort of reality as to what the atmosphere is doing, this is likely down to the warm surrounding waters and strong El Nino.

This was September’s temperature departure.

October Forecast off the CFSv2.

Reality

The CFSv2 is going for the same blowtorch in November as it had for October.

The below Canadian is going for more West trough, East ridge but like we’ve seen already this in October, I think we see the continuation of a highly progressive, transient pattern with potentially extreme back and forth swings between ridge and trough.

2m temperature anomaly

Precipitation anomaly

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The all important US Winter Forecast 2015-16 will be released on Sunday, Nov 1st.

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