Franziska Nothofer:
Thank you for bearing with us for a few minutes. While we are working through some technical issues, we have our applied metrology team on the line just working through some technical issues and we’ll kick things off in a second. Our presenter today is Mark Russo, chief science Officer here at Everstream who will walk through the latest intelligence related to the winter 20 25, 20 26 weather outlook, and the potential supply chain impacts that leaders should be aware of. If you have any questions, please feel free to drop them in the q and a box and we will get to as many as time allows. And with that, I will now turn it over to Mark and hopefully we’ll be able to work through the technical issues that John is currently experiencing, but he should be with us very shortly. Thank you so much for bearing with us and over to you, mark.
Mark Russo:
Thank you Franzi, and good day everybody. This is the time of season where we issue our winter outlook and what we feel based on our research are the primary risks in terms of potential disruptions to supply chain networks, business operations, transportation, especially in the key areas of North America, Europe and East Asia. We’ve been doing research here over the past six weeks or so, and this is the timeframe in late October and early November where we feel we have enough information, enough data to formulate some skillful conclusions as to general winter weather patterns across North America, Europe, and other parts of the northern hemisphere. So today before getting into the details with our expected winter risk for this upcoming winter, going to go through a very fast recap here of last winter to set the table, then get into drivers for this upcoming winter in particular and then put it all together to communicate here the primary winter forecast and expected impacts here.
So beginning first with a quick recap of last winter to set the table, these were last winter’s temperature anomalies in degree Celsius during the core winter months of December, January and February. Overall, it was a pretty normal winter here, as you can see across much of the central and eastern us, the far eastern us, the major population centers on the east coast, including the I 95 corridor was slightly below normal and then west of there was generally normal, although a little bit of variability. And then that variability was also the case across southern Canada. There are major cities and interstates or interrail and roads here across that area. And then the warmest area last winter was the southwest US including California. And that was actually one of the primary reasons why that combined with dryness, why we had some significant wildfire activity and just one of the worst wildfire incidents or several incidents that we’ve seen.
And that was back in January of last year. Now one key analytic that we produce here that really sums up winter in terms of population weighted temperatures is what we call our winter US consumer temperature index. And on this chart we’ve included, we’ve included going back all the way to 1950. These are the winter or December through February winter consumer temp indices. And on this chart specifically the top chart or those values here at the top of the chart are colder winters like what took place back in the late 1970s or more recently, some of the winters of like 13, 14 and 1415. The bottom part of the chart is the warmer winters, which we’ve seen a lot of lately here, and that is one of the key trends here or items of note on this chart is that the trend in winters is getting warmer, and that’s true not only across the US but also for Europe and East Asia.
So we’ve included the trend line here, which is decreasing or going from left to right here on this chart. And especially over the past 10 years, we’ve seen a higher frequency of warmer winters. Now last year was one of the more recent kind of normal winters here, similar to also back in earlier this decade and back late last decade. But over the past 10 years it’s almost been kind of a bimodal distribution. You’ve had something kind of closer to the 30 year average, but then also some of the warmest winters on record, which actually two winters ago was the warmest winter on record. And you have to go back to the winters of 13, 14 and 1415 to where we saw more extreme cold, more prolonged cold, more increase of protection, freeze for temperature sensitive products, as well as more extreme higher frequency of extreme winter storms here and overall more cold and snow in areas of North America. But since then it’s been relatively quiet. There still has been some cold, but not as much compared to what we’ve seen in decades past.
So that was the temperature situation and again, this trend of warmer winters. And we think this trend here is going to continue here with time. And the question becomes what can drive things colder here or similar to what we had last year and some of the more 30 year normal winters that we’ve seen here lately. One other item of notes here in the US from a recap standpoint going back to last year is that last winter was pretty unique. This is a map of snowfall departures from normal across the US area. Shaded in red are snow deficits here, which you saw a lot of across much of the northern us. So it was a winter of very few winter disruptions here in terms of snow and ice across the northern us. The southern US though is a different stormy. That was actually the area where we had more anomalous snow and that included key snow events in major population centers such as New Orleans, which saw their biggest snow event in over 40 years. Also anomalous snow in places such as Kansas City, Ohio River Valley, so more by a south, which again a pretty unique situation in terms of disruptive snow events over the course of the winter here, even some of those shoulder months, like October and April.
Now over in Europe, it was a bit of a different story. Last winter was anomalously warm across much of the continent with only northern France seeing something closer to normal. So it was a very mild winter. Some of the only cold winter was brief and it was during the month of February, but for the core winter months of December, January and February, anomalously warm here with numerous areas seeing over two or even three degrees Celsius above normal. And along with that too, with the unseasonably warmer temperatures, we saw reduced energy demand. We saw reduced protect from freeze for temperature sensitive shipments and it was very quiet in terms of winter, more extreme winter temperatures. It was also very quiet in terms of a disruptive snow events. And as we look at Europe’s snowfall last winter, it was a deficit across much of the continent that was especially true in the Alps and especially true in areas of central and eastern Europe as you see here on this map of winter snowfall departures in Europe for the key months of December, January and February.
So that’s a quick recap here for this past and now turning attention to for this winter and what we think are the key drivers for this upcoming winter, what’s similar to last winter, what’s different? One thing that is similar, and this is how we start in terms of our key drivers are ocean temperatures. And from a macro standpoint in terms of ocean temperatures, the global oceans continue to be very, very warm. If you take a look at the latest snapshot of water temperatures around the world on this map and red shaded areas are warmer than normal, blue shaded areas are cooler than normal. We continue to see a lot of warmth out there and we’ve shown these in previous webinars in recent years, whether it’s winter outlooks or whether it’s summer outlooks, but global ocean temperatures continue to warm or increase with time, and in fact we continue to be at very high levels historically, specifically going into this winter.
As this chart shows, we are ranking or at least the global oceans rank as the third warmest in history here and not as warm as the past couple of winters as you see on this chart, which looks at global ocean temperatures throughout the duration of the year and how this year compares to other years going back to the early 1980. So this year, again, third warmest behind the past two years, but well above the longer term mean. And so with this global ocean warmth here, again, that continues to be the primary reason why winters are getting warmer in the mid latitude areas of the northern hemisphere. Now regionally, there are some similarities, but then also some differences here that we feel are going to at least drive things a bit colder than that longer term trend. Those two primary areas, these regional areas of interest are the La Nina event across the Equatorial Pacific.
This is going to be the second consecutive La Nina winter here. And that does introduce at least a pattern that could drive more cold down into areas of North America and potentially into Europe at times as well. But it is a bit of a at least colder signal at times or at least a signal that does point towards increased cold air transport for this winter here in North America. And then the other area of note that does help for this winter, we think we’ll help to create a more amplified jet stream pattern that will likely at times transport arctic air into North America. That is the North Pacific, which is exceptionally warm, one of the warmest areas basis normal as you see around the entire globe. So these two regional factors do steer away from having an exceptionally warm winter. They do point towards a lot of variability here, but having said that, it also points to some periods of cold than normal temperatures and in some areas more prolonged cold as we’ll talk about here in a little bit.
One other item of note want to mention in terms of the global ocean warmth that we’re seeing here lately, and again, as we’ve all experienced here, you can still see significant cold and we’ve seen that here in recent winters. Classic example of extreme cold recently has been February of 21 and the Texas freeze and the myriad of impacts to all kinds of industries here as a result of that extreme cold. But the key is that as we’ve gone through time that some of the more extreme cold, that frequency is less compared to what it has been. And just to show an example of that, this is a chart of Chicago extreme cold temperatures, the number of days each winter since the early 1980s where temperatures have dropped to or below zero Fahrenheit, and this trend is decreasing specifically the drop is about 1.6 days per decade over the past four decades or so, and we included Chicago as it’s a key hub, not only for US transportation, but then also for us seeding demand and natural gas demand and overall power demand, but just kind of a central population and industry location that this is really highlighting how that frequency of more extreme cold, again has been decreasing with time.
Again, the crux of that is this global, this increase in global ocean warmth that we’re seeing across the globe, especially in areas of the Pacific and Atlantic. So with that, if Jon does not have any technical difficulties, I’ll hand things over to him.
Jon Davis:
I think we’ve solved everything, all the technical stuff is good.
Mark Russo:
Great!
Jon Davis:
Perfect. Yeah, so we’ll now get into the next variable and that variable is snow. And even though it’s not yet winter in places like the States and in Europe, it is winter further up north in places like Siberia and Northern Canada and northern Alaska. So the reason why we look at snow at this time of year in the northerly latitudes is it impacts how much cold air is building up during the early stages of the season. In other words, setting the table of how much cold air is there to tap into as we approach winter. So during the month of October and in early November, snow and how much snow cover extent is being accumulated in the northern areas, that is a key variable that we tend to look at. Here’s the current situation. So this is a map that depicts where there is snow cover on the ground right now and depicts the anomalies in those areas.
So there’s two key areas. Number one, Eurasia of course centered on Siberia and whether it gets extremely cold in Europe or whether it gets extremely cold in the states as we go toward the middle of winter, it comes from Siberia. So Eurasia is the key player in this situation, and if we look at that, there’s no cover across basically all of Siberia and some of the areas in blue are areas where there’s snow on the ground now and there shouldn’t be snow on the ground at this early portion of November. So we will look at the details of that in a second. And then in North America, quite a bit of red, so less snow than you’d normally see at this stage of the season. And both areas are important, Eurasia and North America. So let’s take a look at some of the details of that.
First of all, we’re going to take a look at Eurasia. The snow cover increase this autumn in Eurasia has been extremely volatile. So we started out, and this is looking at daily snow cover extent starting in early October, going through yesterday. And overall, if we go back to early October, the snow cover extent was the highest in the last 10 years. Then we kind of flatlined later in October and actually was one of the lowest, if not the lowest, back about a week ago. And just recently we have increased that situation. So this has been very mixed again, why do we care about this? We care about this because this tends to determine how much cold air is building up across Eurasia, especially in Siberia, the key point of cold arctic air as we go into the winter season. We’ll take a look here in a minute as to how much cold air is built up across the region, but again, very rapid increase early in October, then we went kind of flatline, we melted off some of the snow or flatlined it than just recently kind of an increase.
And again, a very mixed situation. The reason we watch Eurasia is from mid to late winter cold, how much cold air is pulling up in those areas of the frozen Arctic. And typically this tends to expand as days get shorter and basically they go into dark winter here as we go through the next couple of weeks. North America is a bit different. So North America and the snow cover extent this fall has been very low from start to finish. Go back to early October, one of the lowest snow cover extents of the last 10 years now basically the lowest snow cover extent of the last 10 years. So throughout this autumn period, the snow cover extent has been very low. So in other words, cold air has not been able to build up during this fall period in northern Canada, in northern Alaska, places like that here overall, and this typically tends to be a precursor and a sign of autumn cold like in November or early in December over whereas Eurasia cold, that tends to be more of a function of what’ll be happening in late December and January and the middle portion of winter here overall.
So if we put all of this together and we look at, well, how much cold air has built up around the hemisphere, this is looking at the period from October 1st through November 3rd. So in other words, last month, in the beginning of November, overall these are surface temperature anomalies and if we look at areas of North America then during this four and a half week period, then surface temperature anomalies have been well above normal. It’s been a very warm fall across Canada, Alaska, most of the states overall, and there’s very little cold air buildup across the continent. What that tells us is that the fall, like the rest of November, even in early December, will have a warm bias across places like the us and really the same is true across areas of Europe here overall the opposite is true on the other side of the globe.
So in areas of Siberia, adjacent regions of the Arctic Ocean, even extending a little bit toward Alaska but not into Alaska, very cold and below normal temperatures across those areas overall. And the bottom line here right now is that that area, which is a really large spatial extent, it’s colder than normal, it’s not record cold, but it is colder than normal for this last four and a half week period. So the cold air has built up the region. The pool of cold air is one of the strongest we’ve seen in the last couple of years overall, if we compare this year to the previous falls. So there’s a relatively ample source of cold air up across the Arctic regions. Again, this doesn’t tend to make much of a difference in places like Europe and the states during November and even early December, but it doesn’t make a difference as we go into the middle portion of the winter overall, especially later in December and into January.
And again, one of the things that’s a little bit different about this year compared to the last couple of years overall is the fact that that pool of cold air up in the Arctic is a little bit bigger. It’s a little bit colder than it has been over the previous years. Overall, again, a little bit of a mixed signal over overall, but certainly there’s ample cold air for if the circumstances are right to begin to tap into that and bring that down into the us, bring it over into Europe, even possibly into East Asia, China for example here overall. But that is the end result of what’s happened this fall with mixed snow in Eurasia, very low snow in North America. So Siberia in the Arctic, that is the location where we tend to have the overall biggest areas of snowpack across the region overall.
So now let’s talk about the polar vortex a bit, and that’s going to be one of the things that drives these areas of cold air and drives the area as to what area will tend to get some of that cold air that’s been building up across areas of the Siberian region and up across the Arctic overall. So we turn to our PVI our polar vortex index. This is something that we developed a couple of years ago to get an idea of how unstable or stable the overall polar vortex is. Of course, when the PV or the polar vortex is unstable, that allows cold air to begin to flow out of the Arctic into Europe, into the states, into East Asia overall. But when it’s very stable, then that stability tends to trap all the coldest air up across the areas of the Arctic and not allow it to go into the mid-latitudes.
And if we have a very strong polar vortex the entire winter, those are very warm winters in places like the US and into Europe here. Overall, what’s interesting about the current PVI, and this is the current PVI as of today, as well as the forecast of the PVI, the black line being the most recent forecast overall going into the early portion of December, the polar vortex, which has been quite unstable here up to this point and its reasons for some of the cooler that we’ve seen in a couple of areas of Europe and down into China the last couple of weeks. It looks like it’s going to remain on the unstable side here overall going into early December as we go toward the middle portion of the winter, this instability of the PVI and the fact that with an unstable PVI, then you are going to begin to see colder beginning to flow, especially as you go toward the middle portion of winter.
Then that is the area and that is the instability that we’ll see as we begin to see some flowage out of that Siberian area overall. And the fact that it’s this unstable in the early portion of winter, typically that continues as you go into the middle portion of the winter season here overall. So the PVI and the polar vortex is something we watch daily during the entire winter season overall and really is going to be one of the key items day to day and week to week as we go through the winter here. And the more stable or unstable the PV is, that will determine how much cold air is flowing from the cold arctic into areas of the mid latitude where people live, where we use heating sources here and where we transport goods across those areas overall. And it’s something that in our weekly webinars and in our daily products, that’s something that we talk about pretty much every day and monitor every day from now through the end of the winter season overall.
The final variable that we will look at here before we get to the takeaways is the computer models. So it’s kind of interesting is that some of the computer models, and this is looking at the long-term computer model projections for the middle of winter, these Jan Feb. So some of these have been updated early November, some of them are from last month, but during this fall period they have all indicated the same thing that the most favored area for cold is into the US and southern Canada. It is not into Europe, it is not into East Asia into China. So we call that the trifecta where most people live in the northern hemisphere, the US, Europe, east Asia. Of those three, the trifecta, the area most likely to get cold and have cold air intrusions that will likely cause disruptions. It is the US and it is especially the northern portion of the us if we zoom in a little bit, we can see that the projections going toward the middle portion of winter look like it’s going to be a colder winter in the northern US and southern Canada here.
Overall, it varies depending about the computer model that you’re looking at overall, but that has been very consistent in all model space in looking at those projections. And of the three main areas, yeah, it looks like the US and southern Canada, that is going to be the favorite spot for flowage of cold air winter disruptions and overall getting arctic air masses moving into that zone here as we go into the season. It’s not Europe and it’s not East Asia overall. So I’ll turn it back over to Mark and we will put all this together and then talk about some of the takeaways. Mark.
Mark Russo:
Thanks John. Yeah, putting everything together here with the variables that we feel are most important, water temperatures, the La Nina, the North Pacific, the polar vortex, and the buildup of snow cover across the northern hemisphere, putting everything together, there’s certainly more cold signals that are showing up for this winter compared to what we’ve seen in recent years. Now there’s some similarities of last year as we did see, again, kind of a normal type of winter here over the past 30 years and parts of the US there’s a bit milder here across Europe, but specifically here in North America, we do see more colder risks here compared to late. But within that we are also anticipating a lot of temperature variability here. A lot of swings in temperatures from week to week here. And because of that in terms of periods of extreme cold followed by periods of likely anomalous warmth, a lot of back and forth with temperatures.
And for those that are protecting products from freezes here, certainly more of a fluid or dynamic situation as we go week to week and month to month here, a bit more than what normally is for a typical winter due to the expectations of this heightened temperature variability as for more prolonged cold and extreme cold in the areas that face a higher risk of more extreme cold and ultimately enhancement of protection from freeze requirements, that is the northern US and southern Canada. So if your facilities, whether it’s your own or whether it’s your supplier facilities, if your road and rail lines are there in the northern US and southern Canada, then there is a higher risk of more prolonged or extreme cold across those areas. Southern US right now looks to be on the warmer than normal side or reduce protection from freeze requirements here and especially the southwestern us, again, similar to last winter where at least the highest odds, more anomalous warmth during the core months of December, January, and February.
As for the favored storm track area or where there will likely be above normal precipitation, both rain and snow, and also the higher risk of more significant winter related disruptions here for transportation or business operations, that looks to be more so across the northern half of the US and into southern Canada. Again, that would be different from a year ago where we saw reduced impacts here due to less snow well below normal snowfall totals in many areas of the northern US this year is looking different. It’s looking more biased of those extreme winter related storms being up across the northern US and southern Canada. And then the southern US would be have a warmer and drier bias here and ultimately here reduced winter storms, also different from a year ago. And then for those with interest in terms of renewable energy, a lower wind, but higher solar radiation for areas such as California, especially Southern California, and then also Texas as well.
One other item or something to keep in the back of your minds as we go through the winter, again, we’re seeing this trend, this increasing trend of more extreme weather events around the world, more disruptive events throughout the year, throughout all seasons. Again, that is primarily driven by the increase in global ocean temperatures. But going into this winter, again, we do feel that with more cold air being transported and with this trend of increasing extreme weather events, that there is higher potential for more snow and ice, more localized flooding, even some extreme cold in areas. Again, more favored northern US and Southern Canada. So whatever mitigation can be done with that going into this winter, then that should be done as soon as possible and you can’t forecast where those extreme weather events are going to be, but any kind of mitigation of risk strongly recommend here as we go into this new winter season.
And then lastly, in Europe, as John mentioned before, Europe’s winter outlook looks milder again, kind of similar to a year ago. There’s not as many cold signals lining up in Europe compared to North America. While we do feel that temperatures will be quite variable, we feel that there will be more warmer weeks compared to colder weeks. And as a result of that, it does look to be more of a reduced mode for freeze for temperature sensitive goods being shipped across Europe. And also of note here, in terms of the areas more favored for anomalously warm temperatures that would be closer to the oceans and around the Mediterranean or in around Western Europe or the North Sea region here with the most anomalous ocean temperatures being in place there. As for favorite area for storm track, we are expecting a variable storm track this winter and a lot of variable precipitation both in the form of rain and snow, slightly not going to be as dry of a winter as last year.
But also on the flip side, we’re not seeing any increased risk of it being an extremely disruptive winter overall or an abundance of snow over larger areas of Europe. But having said that, again, similar to the situation in North America with this kind of global theme of increasing extreme winter weather events, that is also something to keep in mind. And also any kind of risk mitigation that could be done here going into this winter, we recommend one final item of note before we open things up for q and a is that with risk to the forecast and overall if things were to start changing, would start driving that is the polar vortex and getting into a very extreme mode of the polar vortex, highly unstable or vice versa. If it were to go highly stable here at some point during the winter, then that would begin to shift things around quite a bit. As we go through this winter, we’ll be providing updates on our winter forecasts, some of them in our recorded webinars and in some of our daily products. But those are going to be key here as we look out over the next several weeks if there are going to eventually be any changes. But from what we know right now for the early portion of November, and based on our research, again, these have been our primary winter outlook takeaways for North America and then also for Europe. So let me hand things over to Franzi.
Franziska Nothofer:
Wonderful, thank you both for the great briefing. We’re almost at time, but we’ll dive into one to two more questions from the audience and the recording will be shared afterwards if you have to drop off. So let’s kick off with the first question. So you showed us snow map throughout the session. How often is the snow map updated?
Jon Davis:
Oh, that’s a great question. Yeah, so it’s updated every day. And so when we look at whether it’s small scale snows or looking at snow extent, whether that’s Eurasia, whether that’s the states, individual portions of states, all of that information is updated daily. And at this time of year especially and during the winter season as we’re dealing with overall disruptions and transportation and items like that, it is something that while the data is available daily, we look at it daily. And yeah, anytime that anybody wants to see any update on that, yeah, just get in touch with us. We’d be more than happy to share that information that we use every day internally, but if you ever want to see that, just let us know. But it’s widely available out there. But really good question.
Franziska Nothofer:
Perfect. Thanks John. Alright, let’s cover one more of the three largest population zones in the Northern Hemisphere, the US, Europe, and East Asia, which has the best chance of a cold and snowy winter.
Mark Russo:
Yeah, I’ll take that one. Certainly North America of the three population zones has that highest risk overall. And again, that combination of the La Nina event and the warm water temperatures in the North Pacific and that cold air buildup, which is while it’s over Siberia right now with the polar vortex expected to be more unstable. We think that that would provide a setup to deliver more of that cold into North America this winter compared to other areas like Europe and East Asia.
Franziska Nothofer:
Perfect. Thank you for diving into that and giving some context as well. Alright, brilliant. Thank you both. We appreciate it and we’re now at time. So if anybody has any other questions for Mark and John directly, please feel free to reach out to us at info at everstream ai. And with that, we will send this recording out to all within the next 24 hours after this session. Again, thank you so much for joining us today. Have a lovely day and see you soon. Thank you. Bye-bye.