Weather Service in Reno produces video on upcoming winter's likely El Niño
Submitted by Jeff Munson on Fri, 08/21/2015 - 12:42pm
The National Weather Service in Reno has released a video discussing the possible impacts of a projected El Niño for the winter of 2015-16.
Government weather forecasters have said there is now a better than 90 percent chance of a strong El Niño this winter and an 80 percent chance it will last until early spring of 2016. The weather phenomenon, which is warmer than normal water in the tropical Pacific, has been shaping up since spring.
Dr, Stephanie McAfee, of the Nevada Climate Office says Nevada sits in an awkward geography that makes predicting difficult. Lake Tahoe, Reno and Carson City sit in an area where an El Niño impact could go either way.
"Here El Niños can be wet, El Niños can be dry or El Niños can be about normal. We are in an unfortunate part of the country where El Niños don't provide us a lot of predicted capacity for the winter," McAfee says.
The video also briefly explains the "blob" phenomenon, which are large patches of warm water over the Pacific. There are three of these so-called blobs in the Pacific: one in the Bering Sea, one in the Pacific Northwest and one off the southern California coast.
With California and Nevada experiencing four years of drought, an El Niño winter may be the kind of boost needed to rebuild snowpack in the Sierra and replenish dwindling water supplies in both states. Or not. As the video explains, it is too early to tell and history has shown the weather phenomenon can be a warm one. Climatologists have noted a wet winter could put a dent in the drought but will probably not fill reservoirs to the levels they need to be.
While there's been many El Niño winters since record keeping began in the 1930s, there’s been two notable El Niño events, the winter of 1982-83 and winter of 1997-98 that produced heavy snow in the Sierra, according to the National Weather Service in Reno.
While those two winters were extreme and there have been several El Niño events since, a strong one doesn’t necessarily guarantee a snowy winter for 2015-16.
It could bring cold weather systems capable of dumping several feet of snow within hours or warm systems bringing several inches of rain that could produce damaging floods such as the one experienced New Year’s 1997 that affected much of the west coast including Northern Nevada.
As the video below suggests, it is just too early to tell.
