From Dr. Judah Cohen’s November 10 blog: The ECMWF (at least from yesterday) was predicting the best chance of an SSW is the last week to five days of November. There are no observed SSWs in the satellite era in November, and you have to go back to 1968 and 1958 to find one the reanalysis datasets and I personally try not to use any pre-satellite data in analysis of the polar stratosphere. The most recent SSWs even in early December were 1981 and 1987. To highlight how anomalous an SSW in November would be I include the forecast from the NASA model in Figure v. To compound the confusion these events are not labeled by the changes in the zonal wind but rather by the dramatic warming that accompanies these events. I didn’t include it, but the temperature forecast for the polar stratosphere from the same model would leave you asking what warming? For much of the two weeks temperatures are predicted to be colder than average! So not sure how to square that circle.