I have fixed the September 2019 map for everyone. I think all the FYI beyond the red line is incredibly thin this year and will be prone to severe melt ponding and very early melt-out. Wave action will take care of the MYI tendrils that remain. I know some / everyone disagrees but I think we are already seeing melt ponding begin to percolate through most areas beyond the red line thanks to recent weather.
It should be noted that North American snowcover is now rebounding slightly while Eurasia continues to plunge. North America should follow again by May but I think the Eurasian plunge will be sustained through that point (as is climo, but possibly worse than climo). We've been watching the Bering plunge year after year but it looks like this could be the first super early melt-out of Kara in a few years. That could help set the stage for a domino effect of impacts on the Siberian Seas from both ATL and PAC. I think things are lining up very badly for Beaufort, Chukchi, ESS, Laptev, and Kara.
Finally: the Okhotsk extent collapse has been severe and dramatic. Okhotsk is one of the two farthest regions from the Pole for significant icecover (the other being Hudson Bay / SE Canada). Now that Okhotsk is going and most of the SE Canada ice is gone (and Baffin is following), I wonder if Hudson's status as sole remaining area of thick ice could encourage a "stuck" weather pattern promoting ice retention there into May and June (with another late melt-out, though let's wait until June to gauge exactly when as it could be well into August this yr). Quebec is once again purple. And the ice in Hudson is certainly quite thick. This combination could also result in the continued ejection of Arctic / Greenland airmasses towards the Canadian -500MB anomaly centered over HB, leaving the aforementioned PAC / Siberian seas increasingly vulnerable.
Perhaps nothing to consider but it will be interesting to watch the 500MB pattern evolve as we head towards solstice and this is something I will be keeping an eye out for. It certainly seems to be occurring right now looking at April's 500MB anomaly map.
PPS: also attaching the last 30 days of temperature anomalies. The Eurasian heat is largely unprecedented IMO. I think this portends a very very nasty fire season across much of Siberia as well as the Rockies / Yukon. As the snowcover melts, these areas in red are going to turn into a blast furnace and there will be large plumes of dark carbon drifting into the Arctic by solstice, IMO.