The will-we-or-won’t-we game has begun with regard to the “Godzilla El Niño” taking shape off our coast, and this week we got the U.S. Climate Prediction Center’s monthly update which only confirmed everything we’d already been hearing. Still, California officials warned that the public should not expect for the storms caused by the El Nino to end the state’s persistent drought. It tends to result in warmer conditions for Iowa and other states extending west to the Pacific Ocean. “You’re working with a very small sample set”, he says. During the previous El Nino, several citizens residing in areas that were prone to flooding tried to enhance flood insurance before the storms showed up.
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It says that of the seven years since 1950 with similar El Nino signals (1958, 1966, 1973, 1983, 1988, 1992, and 1998) three were wet years, one was average and three were dry (with water year 1992 perpetuating a drought). It’s developing now near the equatorial Pacific Ocean and is slated to pack a punch. Thanks to El Nino, a warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean that affects global weather, less rain fell to help refill Puerto Rico’s La Plata reservoir, as well as La Plata river in the central island community of Naranjito.
FRESNO, Calif. – Chances are strong that a record-setting El Nino is headed toward California this winter. In four of those winters – 1957-58, 1972-73, 1982-83 and 1997-98 – rainfall in the Bay Area and Los Angeles was at least 140 percent of the historic average, according to studies by Null, a former National Weather Service forecaster.
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In fact, the system that is emerging is so potentially powerful that one NOAA research scientist, Emily Becker, last month nicknamed this year’s El Nio “Bruce Lee”, after the legendary Chinese martial arts star. But California and the Pacific Northwest, going clear up into Western Canada is in dire need of a good steady rain and snowfall this winter.
