One of the strongest El Nino weather patterns ever forecast is expected to peak in late fall or early winter but it’s too early to say if it will ease the four-year-old drought in Californa. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says, “Overall, there is a greater than 90 percent chance that El Nino will continue through Northern Hemisphere winter 2015-16 and around an 85 percent chance it will last into early spring 2016.” El Nino’s effects on temperature and precipitation in the contiguous 48 states are expected to be minimal for the rest of this summer, it said.
“What’s new this month is we are predicting that this El Nino could be among the strongest El Ninos in the historical record dating back to 1950,” said Mike Halpert, deputy director of NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, during a tele-conference.
From Florida to central California, the southern United States may see higher than normal amounts of precipitation, as could the East Coast, said Phys.org. Halpert said it would be warmer and drier than normal in the northern Rockies, Great Lakes, Hawaii and Alaska, said the science news service. It quoted Halpert as saying while rain would be welcome in drought-suffering California, “One season of above-normal rain and snow is unlikely to erase four years of drought.”
More than 97 percent of California, the country’s top farm state, is in drought. Growers have curtailed cotton and rice plantings because of shortages of irrigation water to focus instead on higher-priced fruits and vegetables.
A NASA climatologist in California said the weather pattern “has the potential of being the Godzilla El Nino” that brings torrents of rain and snow, said the Los Angeles Times.
Drought covers most of the West. Washington state is headed for its hottest summer ever and Oregon had its hottest June and July on record, said Capital Press. Some 43 percent of the state, including the usually rainy Olympic Peninsula, are in “extreme” drought, the fourth stage in a rating system that begins with “abnormally dry” and ends with “exceptional” drought, said the weekly Drought Monitor.