Godzilla El Nino - hang onto your hats CA!

[pixy0stix]

I hope everyone has a good pair of rain boots.

www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/08/13/432099022/scientists-say-we-could-be-heading-into-godzilla-el-ni-o


This year's El Niño is shaping up to be a whopper — potentially surpassing the one in 1997, which was the strongest on record, the National Weather Service says.

That could be good news for drought-stricken California, but not-so-good for places such as the Philippines and Indonesia, which typically experience below-normal rainfall or drought conditions during El Niños.

NWS' Climate Prediction Center said Thursday that all of its computer models are now predicting a strong El Niño, or warming in the Pacific, that will peak in the late fall or early winter. The announcement confirms signs that have been around for weeks telegraphing that this El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), as it is officially known, would be a particularly strong one.

"This definitely has the potential of being the Godzilla El Niño," Bill Patzert, a climatologist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge, says, adding that the signal from the Pacific Ocean "right now is stronger than it was in 1997," the year of the most powerful El Niño on record.

Climatologists say there's a greater than 90 percent chance that El Niño will continue through the Northern Hemisphere winter 2015-16 and around an 85 percent chance it will last into early spring 2016.

"If this lines up to its potential, this thing can bring a lot of floods, mudslides and mayhem," he said.

El Niño is marked by a 1.5 degree Celsius or greater temperature rise in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, which causes a stalling of trade winds and a shifting of a subtropical jet stream "that normally pours rain over jungles of southern Mexico and Central America toward California and the southern United States," according to The Los Angeles Times.

El Niño brings drier weather to the western Pacific. It also tends to suppress hurricane formation in the Atlantic and increase it in the eastern and central Pacific.

According to Mike Halpert, deputy director of the Climate Prediction Center in College Park, Md., peak anomalies in the Pacific could exceed 2 degrees Celsius this year.

"It looks like it will be one of the three or four strongest events on record. Whether it matters if it's 1, 2, 3 or 4 is debatable," he was quoted by The San Diego Union Tribune as saying.

The Tribune reports: "Some climate models show that anomalies in the equatorial Pacific's surface temperatures will rise above 3 degrees Celsius during the coming winter. If that plays out, it would be an unprecedented phenomenon."

The L.A. Times writes:

"Already, El Niño is being blamed for drought conditions in parts of the Philippines, Indonesia and Australia, as occurred in 1997-98.
"Drought is also persistent in Central America. Water levels are now so low in the waterways that make up the Panama Canal that officials recently announced limits on traffic through the passageway that links the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
"El Niño also influenced the heavy rainstorms that effectively ended drought conditions in Colorado, Texas and Oklahoma."

[InBetweenDays]

There goes yet another ski year in the PNW.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using proboards

[meshaliuknits]

I do have good rain boots!

Sorry Philippines!

[litebright]

Straight from drought to mudslides, then. Eeeek.

[aurora]

What I really want to know is whether I'll regret not having bought a ski pass this year.

[elleblue]

Aug 14, 2015 10:32:42 GMT -5 litebright said:

Straight from drought to mudslides, then. Eeeek.

Yeah, the coastal areas are in for a really rough fall/winter. Selfishly I'm happy because we need the water and I'm in a non-mudslide area even though I'm on a hill nearish the coast. But I feel for the people whose homes (and potentially whose lives) are going to be in danger. 

[Daria Morgandorffer]

So, forgive my complete ignorance on El Ninos, but does it just mean extreme rain for the West coast? Or is it just erratic weather patterns all around? This is one climate thing that I am really in the dark on.

[elleblue]

Aug 14, 2015 13:48:08 GMT -5 Daria Morgandorffer said:

So, forgive my complete ignorance on El Ninos, but does it just mean extreme rain for the West coast? Or is it just erratic weather patterns all around? This is one climate thing that I am really in the dark on.

It's somewhat of a chain reaction. Let me see if I can dig up something that helps explain it. 

Eta: my Google fu is failing me. I can't find anything that explains it in layman's terms, only weather blogs that are nearly impossible to decipher. lol There's this article that mentions that the south and the eastern U.S. will get heavier rainfall but it doesn't bother explaining why. 

[Deleted]

I just really need to post this video link, because Chris Farley will forever be in my brain.

youtu.be/IvmeUStFvz8

[shortcake2675]

I want this to mean lots of snow in NE Nevada, but we're along the northern edge.

[pescalita]

I feel like last year we really got to the point where you internalized the drought, like you didn't expect it to rain - didn't buy rain gear, didn't make contingent plans for outdoor activities etc, so this is going to come as a big culture shock.

[pescalita]

Also, being down in SLO this week was kind of depressing. We're used to the brown summers but this was like a new shade, and most noticeably the lake we went to take a hike around wasn't there.

[katietornado]

I seem to have picked the wrong year to move to SoCal. This is insane.

[pescalita]

Aug 15, 2015 19:55:32 GMT -5 @kirkette said:

Aug 15, 2015 19:39:07 GMT -5 pescalita said:

Also, being down in SLO this week was kind of depressing. We're used to the brown summers but this was like a new shade, and most noticeably the lake we went to take a hike around wasn't there.

Laguna Lake?

Yup.

[nomad100]

I was just reading an article about how this may impact our weather here in MI.

According to the weather guy who wrote the article, it will mean less snow and warmer temps this winter so the great lakes will likely be lower next summer since there will be the double whammy of less snow and no ice pack to limit evaporation.

He didn't give any predictions past the winter so who knows what the Spring and Summer will bring.

[nsuhomer]

Aug 15, 2015 20:08:10 GMT -5 katietornado said:

I seem to have picked the wrong year to move to SoCal. This is insane.

This exactly.

[josieposy]

Aug 15, 2015 21:23:37 GMT -5 nomad100 said:

I was just reading an article about how this may impact our weather here in MI.

According to the weather guy who wrote the article, it will mean less snow and warmer temps this winter so the great lakes will likely be lower next summer since there will be the double whammy of less snow and no ice pack to limit evaporation.

He didn't give any predictions past the winter so who knows what the Spring and Summer will bring.

Oh goody. So it will be -5 instead of -15 in January around here.

[mouse]

I keep thinking this says "hang onto your cats"

This is deep and relevant, so I thought I'd share.

[pixy0stix]

Aug 14, 2015 13:32:49 GMT -5 aurora said:

What I really want to know is whether I'll regret not having bought a ski pass this year.

I was reading local predictions - up to 140% more snow at some resorts.

[calmcosmo]

Yikes. The section is the pacific coast highway closest to me is very mudslide prone. It was actually closed three months last year due to slides and it barely rained .

[nomad100]

Aug 15, 2015 21:40:40 GMT -5 josieposy said:

Aug 15, 2015 21:23:37 GMT -5 nomad100 said:

I was just reading an article about how this may impact our weather here in MI.

According to the weather guy who wrote the article, it will mean less snow and warmer temps this winter so the great lakes will likely be lower next summer since there will be the double whammy of less snow and no ice pack to limit evaporation.

He didn't give any predictions past the winter so who knows what the Spring and Summer will bring.

Oh goody. So it will be -5 instead of -15 in January around here.

That is what I thought but then he talked about how it will likely compare to the winter of 97-98 where people were golfing on Christmas Day.  So it may actually be a nice winter.