We're entering the most favorable phase (phase 8) of the Global Wind Oscillation (GWO), for tornadoes and tornado environments in the deep south, especially for Dixie Alley, this is consistent with the more recent NWP forecasts and growing consensus for severe next weekend.
Figure 5 from
Gensini & Mariano (2015) Red shading = above normal sig tor parameter, stippling (harder to see)) denotes statistical significance & vis versa w/ blue. We're currently about to see a glimpse of the composite at the far bottom right.
Here's the current GWO forecast available via:
https://atlas.niu.edu/gwo/
Each black box denotes forecast increments of 1 week in advance, thus the +7 in phase 8 corresponds to where the GWO is forecast to be a week from now when this potential bout of severe weather may be knocking on our doorsteps in the SE US
For a reminder/primer on what the GWO is (it's just Atmospheric Angular Momentum (AAM) + AAM tendency), I explained this in more detail here back in December:
https://southernwx.com/community/threads/the-great-december-dump.650/page-120#post-221423
On a side note, I've always found it interesting how these seemingly random/stochastic subseasonal events like the MJO, whose e-folding scales are on the order of several weeks-few months, leaves its footprint in the global circulation pattern sometimes for months after it's long gone. This is a classic example of that. Here's a plot shared by Dr Ventrice of 200mb (tropopause/upper troposphere) zonal wind anomalies (red = positive >>> (anomalous) westerly winds, blue = negative >>> (anomalous) easterly winds). Notice the band of orange shading (positive AAM anomalies or anomalous westerly flow) starts out in the deep tropics in February. This +AAM/westerly flow was likely triggered by an MJO event coupling to the leftovers of an ongoing weak El Nino this winter, and watch how this anomaly persists and propagates poleward over a period of several weeks, eventually reaching us in the subtropics 2 months later to influence this upcoming bout of severe weather next week.
The residence time of these zonal wind anomalies in the context of the temporal scales of the phenomena that trigger them (i.e. I'm saying the zonal wind anomalies are persisting and potentially influencing the weather well beyond the lifespan of a typical MJO event) is truly fascinating to me and one of the big reasons why I've vested so much of my time and interest to studying climate dynamics and these poorly understood subseasonal phenomena.
Pretty neat huh?