NOAA Updates It’s March 2023 Outlook on February 28, 2023

March 1, 2023Posted inweatherNo Comments

At the end of every month, NOAA updates its Outlook for the following month which in this case is March of 2023. We are reporting on that tonight.

There have been some significant changes in the Outlook for March and these are addressed in the NOAA Discussion so it is well worth reading. We highlighted some of the important changes within the NOAA Discussion. We also provided the prior Mid-Month Outlook for March for comparison.  From the NOAA Discussion:

  • “the updated temperature outlook has increased forecast coverage and probabilities for below-normal temperatures for the western CONUS and for the northern Plains, Midwest, Great Lakes, mid-Atlantic and Northeast.”
  • “Stronger support for favored below-normal monthly mean temperatures for more of the central and eastern CONUS resulted in a reduction in the depicted area for favored above-normal temperatures which are now forecast from Texas eastward to the lower Atlantic seaboard.”
  • “a somewhat southward displaced overall anomalous precipitation forecast pattern.”

The article includes the Drought Outlook for March. We have also included the current fire incidents (not many) and four months of Wildland Fire Potential Outlooks and also a map showing the year-to-date snowpack in the West. We also provide the Week 2/3 Tropical Outlook for the World.

NOAA Updates it’s Four-Season Outlook On February 16, 2023 – Potential El Niño impacts were considered in the outlooks for autumn 2023 and next winter

February 17, 2023Posted inweatherNo Comments

Updated at 3:05 p.m. EST February 17, 2023 to incorporate information on the latest Sudden Stratospheric Warming (SSW) event

On the third Thursday of the month right on schedule NOAA issued what I describe as their Four-Season Outlook. The information released also included the MId-Month Outlook for the single month of March plus the weather and drought outlook for the next three months.  I present the information issued and try to add context to it. It is quite a challenge for NOAA to address the subsequent month, the subsequent three-month period as well as successive three-month periods for a year or a bit more.

It is very useful to read the excellent discussion that NOAA issues with this Seasonal Outlook. The CPC/IRI analysis suggests that ENSO will very soon return to Neutral with a La Nino bias and gradually transition to true Neutral, Neutral with an El Nino bias, and then solidly El Nino. Confidence in the first part of that sequence of transitions is higher than in the latter part of the sequence.