well tip if you've got any good ideas about those teleconnection indicies i'd be glad to hear 'em, because my term project in one class this semester will involve me tying the phase of those suckers to tropical cyclogenesis... if it works, anyway. gonna have to learn principal component analysis in a crunch here, man.
anyhow speaking of SOI, it's been averaging positive since mid september or so, with the odd dip here or there.. but has gone strongly positive in the last few days. this sort of action will get the easterly flow in the tropical pacific really kicking and strengthen the upwelling off of south america. got a hunch next year will be a la nina year. in these sorts of transitional winters... i.e. from near neutral to cold ENSO, you can get some pretty serious cold-air outbreaks over the continent. a couple of quick analogs i can think up are the '84-'85 winter and '95-'96. there's already been an general trend towards blocking and higher heights in the northern latitudes so far this fall, so i'm reckoning that winter '05-'06 could have some embedded extremes early.. then probably transition to the warm/dry south and mild/moist north configuration that is particular to la nina, if it actually does come on.
anyhow, worth noting that a few of the 12z runs are becoming more interesting in that a nw caribbean system is starting to emergy early next week. around the time we're done dealing with whatever semi-tropical feature tries to pop out of the northern end of that upper trough near bermuda, the lower end might be brewing something up as the pattern relaxes and more ridging builds in over all that persistent low-level convergence.
in the short term the northern mid atlantic and southwestern new england are in big trouble as persistent tropical-origin rains keep funneling in off the atlantic. draw a 100 mile circle around new york city and anywhere in that zone is going to likely see widespread regional flooding.
HF 1959z12october