The most beautiful, exciting and hopeful thing about November has come out of England and it is a weather forecast

The most beautiful, interesting and hopeful thing about November has come out of a cold building in the British city of Reading and it is a weather forecast. In its latest seasonal reading, the European Weather Forecast Center has sounded the alarm: Your data points to a negative NAO.

And that, as you may have guessed, is magnificent news for Spain.

But let’s go in parts and explain what we’re talking about.. The ‘NAO’ is the ‘North Atlantic Oscillation‘: the ‘dance’ between the Azores anticyclone and the Icelandic low, the two major atmospheric phenomena that govern the meteorology of the North Atlantic.

When the index we use to “measure who is winning” is negative, the Azores anticyclone is weaker than normal and, for this reason, it cannot block deep Atlantic storms. The direct consequence is that they circulate further south than normal: right at our latitude.

That is, precisely, what the ECMWF has planned from its headquarters in Reading, England.

Kristian Strommen et al. (2021)

It is not an isolated prediction. On the contrary, experts they have been warning weeks of a 2025-26 winter conditioned by La Niña and a potentially weaker polar vortex; that is, with greater probability of cold bursts in southwestern Europe.

This is the double confirmation we needed for a seasonal prediction that (seasonal as it is) remains too generic and uncertain. But how positive it is.

Why is it important? As I say, for Spain this is, in aggregate termsgood news. By increasing the frequency with which cyclones deviate south (favoring the Atlantic storms that reach us), the direct positive impact is noticeable on the level of reservoirs and the price of energy.

How much can we trust a prediction of this type? Moderately. There is no doubt that meteorologists have greatly improved their ability to capture trends, but let’s not fool ourselves: it is already difficult for us to predict 15 days ahead, the seasons and months are another matter.

However, it is not a random prediction. We simply have to understand it as a risk or a probable scenario and not as a deterministic and closed forecast. Because, in the end, in the enormous set of possible scenarios, this begins to be the most probable.

And, if confirmed, our reservoirs will thank us.

Image | WeatherModels

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