If you haven’t noticed, the past couple of weeks and especially the past couple of days have been a wet start to the Winter season. We are already into the month of December and as much as I can recall we haven’t experienced any “real” snowfall yet, but I’ve had to break out my rain jacket on numerous occasions. I could of sworn that the first half of our home games this season were played in the rain which really ruined my tailgating experience. You might be wondering why it is that this Winter is so wet compared to the snow we got in October in 2013, or the even the snowfall we got before break last year. The answer according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is a Strong El Niño setting the stage for 2015 winter and next year.
Forecasters at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center issued the U.S. Winter Outlook today favoring cooler and wetter weather in Southern Tier states with above-average temperatures most likely in the West and across the Northern Tier. “A strong El Niño is in place and should exert a strong influence over our weather this winter,” said Mike Halpert, deputy director, NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. “While temperature and precipitation impacts associated with El Niño are favored, El Niño is not the only player. As you can see it seems all to be El Niño’s fault, whoever he is.
El Niño’s is an irregularly occurring and complex series of climatic changes affecting the equatorial Pacific region and beyond every few years, characterized by the appearance of unusually warm. A translation would be that an unpredictable climate change is making it warm. Other factors that often play a role in the winter weather include the Arctic Oscillation, which influences the number of arctic air masses that penetrate into the South and nor’easters.
I’m not really sure how I feel about it now that we are into December but it doesn’t feel like Winter yet. Maybe we will all get used to the rain, but I for one was looking forward to the odd chance we get a snow day next semester.
I was really looking forward to building a snowman but it might have to wait until well after break.
Never heard of this so is cool that you wrote about something original like this. Do they know what exactly causes an El Nino to happen?
I definitely think it has to do with global warming as well! Last year was the hottest year on record, right behind the second hottest–the year before it. Maybe look further into climate change to explore its correlation to the wet winter? Here’s a cool link to check out that might help your development of the topic: http://www.carbonbrief.org/met-office-climate-change-made-uks-extreme-wet-winter-in-20134-seven-times-more-likely-2
thank GOD for no Snow!
I learned about el Niño in environmental science class, there is a very interesting thing that comes with el niño, and its called la niña this is the opposite and it will definitely come up next year and be a la niña year. Try researching that!