Comment by doodlebugging

Nice dashboard. I have built a spreadsheet that I use for tracking weather that is fairly similar to this though I only have 25 years of data that I have collected so far. All of it was collected on my property though and I am up in one of the areas that could become pretty wet if this plays out like the other Super El Nino in 2015-2106. During that period, we almost matched our annual rainfall total between mid-October and 31 December, 2015.

An interesting thing to note in the chart is the projected peak of this El Nino. Their models project a single peak in about November. If this works like 2015-2016 then you can expect to see two peaks with the first occurring late this year and the second occurring by mid-March, 2027. There was a short period beginning in mid-November, 2015 when the ocean SST anomaly dropped from 3.1C to 2.3C before rebounding to 2.9C by mid-January, 2016 and it remained above 2C until mid-March, 2016. I don't see any allowance for a two-headed peak in those model outputs though it makes sense that winter mixing of Arctic waters could cool the eastern Pacific a few degrees without putting an end to the super El Nino conditions, with 2015-2106 being an obvious, recent analogue.

In section 5 the question of coupling appears to be answered in the affirmative in the data from the top left chart of Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) and El Nino. There appears to be a long oscillation trend of about 12 years evident in the data. Perhaps one should see whether this correlates at all with sunspot cycles which have a similar period.

I can make another correlation from my own data that illustrates how the El Nino/La Nina cycle works here in NTexas.

Referring to section 4 - In Context you can see the flip to La Nina period around May 2010 and La Nina conditions held until August 2014 and it took until October 2015 for the rains to return. My records show that when it stopped raining in late May 2010 we were ahead of 20-year avg annual rainfall totals for that date. We ended that year and each year through 2014 with a rainfall deficit. By the end of 2014 we were firmly in a multi-year drought in NTexas with a cumulative rainfall deficit during that period of 31.1" (789.94mm) below 20 year avg annual rainfall. Interestingly enough, we ended 2015 with an annual surplus of 32.1" (815.34mm) here at my place. That erased all of the 5 year rainfall deficit (2010-2014) in the period between October 22 and December 31.

The drought broke in October 2015 as I mentioned at the top, after SST had climber to super El Nino levels, the highest on record to that point. The rains arrived about a month before the first SST peak in November, 2015.

Today I have a sensor array that tells me that soil temps in the full sun from a probe 4-6" (~100-152 mm) below surface reached 100 degrees about three weeks ago during this long, hot spell leading into what I hope is a wet period. Soil moisture there is under 30% and everything that was green in mid-June when the rains stopped is dry and brown today except the hardiest native grasses and small plants. We've had 1.5" (38 mm) of rain since mid-June which puts us almost 5" (127 mm) under the 20 year avg annual total for this date.

Luckily there are signs that the hot, high pressure dome that has dominated our weather since June is moving out of the area and the rains that have been falling west and north of us will be falling on us in a few short weeks.

Thanks for posting this dashboard. It fits so well with my own data that it allows me time to plan for winter gardening. I grew carrots last year and if I can do that again it will make it two years in a row. That would be cool.

EDIT: I took a look at the trend of sunspot numbers found here [0] and there is good correlation with peak sunspot numbers being near the zero-crossing on Section 5 - Is it Coupled chart of SOI. Since we are on the declining side of the sunspot cycle heading into solar minimum, still a few years away, it fits well with this being an El Nino period. Adjust the chart using the slider so that it covers the period from 1990-present like the chart in the dashboard. From that data, the strongest El Nino so far in 2015-2106 occurred during the weakest solar cycle in recent history.

[0]https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/solar-activity/solar-cyc...