As surmised earlier this summer, the GWO has remained firmly in the El Niño attractor and is poised to transit phases 7-8 as the tendency becomes negative. While this favors a western ridge aloft, one is situated over central NOAM. My read is that the Pacific wave train is interacting with persistent, east-shifted El Niño large-scale tropical heating, perhaps reinforcing downstream wave activity and amplifying the ridge further east.