It is shown that interannual variability of the northern winter stratospheric flow in 1964--1993 was closely linked to large-scale circulation anomalies in the middle troposphere. Of the known tropospheric tele-connection patterns, the one having the strongest relation to the DJF zonal-mean stratospheric flow was the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). Singular value decomposition between the 500 and 50-hPa geopotential heights produced a 500-hPa structure containing elements of the NAO pattern, but including an anomaly in eastern Siberia. During this time period, the correlation of NAO-related modes to the polar lower stratosphere exceeded that of the equatorial quasi-biennial oscillation. ¿American Geophysical Union 1994