07/09/26 Thursday 6:00 am
When I first heard about the idea that we would have a record-setting El Niño, my first thought was, wow, that is nearly a year ahead prediction. Then I found out that some of the usual parameters by the usual model were not used.
Ok. Here is another thing: for the last few years ( 4 or 5), NOAA has been trying to retire a couple of weather models. Two of the short-term models are of little use here. But if you head a few hundred miles to our east, they are the short-term models of choice, especially for storm prediction. The reason they don’t work here is our mixed terrain.
Our area struggles with that across all weather models, but the shorter the term and the higher the resolution, the worse they perform with terrain. There is also a new international weather model being discussed; I don’t know much about it, and I will wait until I do more research before drawing a conclusion.
Since earlier El Niño predictive data may have been anomalous (after the bold headline that everyone who has a winter in the US clicked on), Atmospheric Scientists continue to collect data, looking for confirmations of agreement, disagreement, etc.
After reading some of those takes and viewing the model runs that led them to these more recent conclusions, I am seeing where a case could be made for a slightly weaker El Niño (still strong historically), and if correct, would be a setup for a very stormy, snowy winter (if, if, if-I know).
Considering meteorological winter starts in 4 months and 3 weeks, it’s probably timely for me to jump in and start digging through data.
ENSO (El Niño Southern Oscillation) is responsible for La Niña, El Niño, and neutral conditions. We have only been tracking it since 1950, which is a millisecond in most scientific contexts.
Here is every year since then. What you are looking at are the positive (in red, El Niño years) and negative (in blue, La Niña years). I have identified the years originally considered (analog years), assuming a “Strongest Ever” El Niño. And some new analog years which are currently being considered.
I just looked at the time, and I am afraid I will have to finish this tomorrow morning. Stay tuned for Part 2.
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