This is exactly what I was afraid of. Almost exactly a month ago I posted a blog titled The Return of El Nino? where I discussed the CPC’s assessments of the latest temperatures across the equatorial Pacific Ocean. These were the water temperatures a little over a month ago:
Here are the temperatures recorded on July 1st:
Clearly Sea Surface Temperatures are rising along the equator even if SST’s are remaining neutral, even cooling along our immediate coastline. The NOAA has announced that El Niño conditions have arrived and will likely persist through the 2009-2010 winter season. So far this El Niño is categorized as weak, but the possibility remains that we could enter a moderate or strong phase, which would mean a potentially disasterous ski season in the Northwest.
I’ll do some research, but I haven’t heard of a very cold and snowy moderate-strong El Niño winter season in the Northwest. If the El Nino remains weak, hope survives for a great winter season as 2006-2007 was a weak El Niño year.
The NOAA will have much more information regarding the nature of this pattern in August and September, but for now you can go here for the techincal discussion or here for the news release.
Matthew Leach
Forecasting Kitsap
