An interesting story was posted on the USA Today website. It was titled: “Massive El Niño growing in California, say models”
You can find it here: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/07/09/el-nino-california/29921633/
It is not the best article about El Nino and used a lot of scientific mumbo-jumbo and misinformation. I figured I would translate it for everyone.
SACRAMENTO — There is growing evidence California could see an even stronger El Niño event this winter than the 1997 one that caused massive flooding across Northern California.
SACRAMENTO – Latest computer projections suggest a stronger El Nino this winter than the 1997 event that caused massive flooding across Northern California.
Stunning images from Japan’s Himawari 8 Weather Satellite, just activated Tuesday, show what could become a historic El Niño in full bloom.
We’re going to bring up Japan’s Himawari 8 Weather Satellite, just activated Tuesday. Also, we think sea-surface temperature is all that matters to El Nino.
“Almost all models are showing consistency that we’re seeing a stronger and stronger tendency for that to hold in place through the winter season. It could rival that of 1997,” News10-KXTV Chief Meteorologist Monica Woods said.
In recent days, cyclones and typhoons, including one mammoth storm heading toward China with cloud cover the size of Texas, have helped shift the trade winds from west to east, pushing warm sub-surface water toward the coast of South America and making it all but certain an El Niño event will last at least through the fall.
We finally include a meteorologist here. Then we were going to try to make a connection between typhoon winds and trade winds here, but since that isn’t a real thing, we aren’t going to write that. Oh, we have to fill space? Okay, we’ll write it then. Also, we are going to try to include some information about warm sub-surface water, but since we don’t really understand that either, we’re only putting it in here to fill space.
“What we want is just enough water to come in slowly enough for the watersheds to hold that,” Woods said. “The nice thing is that so many of them are dry that they have the capacity, but the flip side of that is, as anybody knows in a desert climate, is that terrain is just parched and so a lot of that can be runoff if those storms are too warm.”
In this El Niño year, if the models hold up — and climatologists said they seem almost certain it will — it could soon be the beginning of the end of California’s historic drought, even if it may come at a price.
In this El Nino year, if the models hold up – and climatologists predict the models will – it could help promote the development of multiple chances for rain this winter for California. If that rain happens, it could mean a lot of help for the drought. But none of this is certain, and even if the rains come, the drought is so intense it will take a lot of rain, over a very long time, to restore the resevoirs.
“Yes, El Niño’s great, and it could provide us with relief and replenish some of these reservoirs,” Woods said. “The flip side of that is it could mean catastrophic flooding, too.”
Now here is a quote to scare you into reading more of our stories at a later date about this weather pattern.
Now….
I love USA Today. I subscribed to the paper for a year, I read the site frequently. But, c’mon guys. The slideshows are great. The extra multimedia is awesome, too. So bump up the science!
