Goodbye El Niño, hello January thaw
Since the fall of 2006, global weather patterns have been influenced, at least in part, by El Niño. This phenomenon of warmer-than-normal sea-surface temperatures quickly sprang to life last year, but now seems to be weakening at a rapid rate.
El Niño is the abnormal warming of ocean temperatures off the west coast of South America, near Ecuador and Peru. During this event, we typically see increased amounts of moisture and milder conditions. About 70 percent of the time, heavy rains will often create mudslides in Southern California. This winter, though, the region has had very little rain, but record temperature extremes. For example, just a week ago, there were 80-degree temperatures and disastrous fires resulting from strong Santa Ana winds. This past weekend, by extreme contrast, turned out to be the coldest in Southern California since the same period in 1932.
The “Pineapple Connection” from Hawaii, this time around, brought the usual heavier rains and mountain snows about 600 miles north, into the Pacific Northwest and southwestern Canada. El Niño is also being blamed for the mild winter in the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada that has left most ski resorts with not enough snow to attract area skiers and snowboarders.
This El Niño pattern also brought four big snowstorms within a month to eastern Colorado and the western portions of the central Great Plains, a record. And, if that wasn’t enough, major ice storms have also plagued the central United States as well.
The latest sea-surface temperature data now indicates that El Niño is weakening. Droughts in Australia, Indonesia and Micronesia that are usually typical of this warm-water phenomenon are being replaced by flood-inducing rains, an indication that El Niño is on its way out.
Many scientists claim that El Niño will dissipate completely within several months and could be replaced by a new La Niña, the abnormal cooling of sea-surface temperatures off the west coast of South America, sometime this year. Based on the fact that we’ve seen several El Niños and La Niñas within the last five years, I would also expect to see that cooler-than-normal sea-surface temperature event evolve perhaps as early as our summer season. Prior to the late 1990s, we would experience an El Niño approximately every seven years.
The “back-and-forth” events between El Niño and La Niña are another example of our pattern of wide weather extremes, the worst in about 1,000 years. No one is certain why ocean waters warm up and cool down. I believe that short- and long-term climatological cycles and underwater volcanic activity may play a big part in the formation of each new alternating El Niño and La Niña.
As far as our Inland Northwest weather, we did see those frigid temperatures arrive on schedule. Last week, some stations across the northern regions near the Canadian border eastward into Western Montana, dipped into the bone-chilling 10 to 25 degrees below below zero, the coldest readings in more than two years. Readings in Spokane dropped to 5 degrees below Friday morning. In Coeur d’Alene, it was 3 degrees below zero on Friday and it was 6 degrees below in the Spokane Valley on Sunday.
Temperatures should continue to climb between now and the end of next week. Increasing snow showers, possibly again mixed with rain, should accompany the milder temperatures. It also looks like we’ll see another January “thaw.”
Despite a weakening El Niño phenomenon, I still see a milder and drier February, similar to the last several years, except for some briefly snowy periods around Valentine’s Day and again later around the Feb. 17 through 24. The cold spells next month will be of short duration lasting only a couple of days.
As we head into spring, only scattered, quickly melting snows will fall in the lowland areas of Eastern Washington and North Idaho in March and early April. Then, I see another in a long series of wet and cool spring seasons, but not as damp as in 2006.