A few years ago in the exam for my dynamics class, a student wrote "Is there an El Niño? Because this day has just been going on for ages!". Proud lecturer moment.

Surprised I haven't seen any headlines about the Extreme To The Max Super Godzilla El Niño slowing down the rotation rate of Earth and thus making the days a bit longer (conservation of angular momentum)

If you take that time series (or a longer one if possible) and regress it onto some variable like SLP/Z500 across the N Hemisphere, does anything interesting emerge to suggest a larger-scale control on this variability?

This is fantastic! I might show this to my dynamics class tomorrow – with credit of course (just introduced them to these waves in an ENSO lecture this morning... the animation might really help them)

Thanks Peter!

Some satisfying isolated Altocumulus lenticularis looking towards Angus and the Cairngorms from St Andrews earlier, with a lower layer of broken Cumulus and higher Cirriform formations.

An exceptionally deep extratropical cyclone for the time of year just west of Ireland. 953 hPa on the 12 UTC Met Office analysis. Helping drive strong warm advection to its east which has brought exceptionally high temperatures to parts of the UK yesterday and overnight ahead of the cold front.

2010 is like the 1976 of cold events. So outrageously anomalous with respect to the climate of the time

Only 40 years ago, average winter daily minimum temperatures were below freezing across Scotland.

I’ve updated the long-running (starts 1866) CRU Southern Oscillation Index (SOI). This lets us compare the currently developing El Niño with earlier events including 1877-78. 2026 has developed very quickly, similar to the 1997-98 one. Thick line is 3-month running mean, with y-axis reversed.

In the eastern North Pacific south of Mexico, Hurricane Polo has rapidly intensified from a tropical depression to a major hurricane in just over a day and continues to barrel toward category 5 strength.

💯