If you lived in California, the water temperature of the Pacific Ocean might be useful to track. But here in Texas, it’s pretty critical, too. Not the water temperatures off the coast of California so much, but the temperature down near the equator.
That’s because when the surface temperatures are higher, our weather goes one way. When they’re lower, something else happens. And they’ve been lower for a while, giving us unusually warm and dry weather statewide.
But now, some meteorologists are warning that could change this year, which means what’s ahead for our weather?
Anthony Franze, a meteorologist who covers weather in Texas, recently wrote a story for the San Antonio Express-News suggesting an El Niño is on the way. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Anthony Franze: Yeah, La Niña has been active for the last few months. They actually announced it was active starting in October of last year. And it’s still active now in mid-January this year.
And it really brought warm weather all across the state. Statewide average temperatures have been between, really, five and eight degrees above average in almost every city across Texas this winter.
And it has been extremely dry to Austin, San Antonio and Dallas – they’ve all seen less than half an inch of rain so far this winter, which is just crazy low.
Texas Standard: So now we’re looking at the possibility of an El Niño, which means what? The water is getting warmer down near the equator and what will we see here in Texas?
Right. It’s looking now that La Niña is probably going to end here in the next month or two, and then kind of the long-range forecast models do show that water in the kind of central to eastern Pacific near the equator, it’s going to start to warm up. And when that happens, we get an El Niña weather pattern, because a lot of things happen in the global circulations that cause that to happen.
Because it sounds kind of arbitrary, right? That water temps thousands of miles away will cause our weather to be different, but it changes the global kind of atmospheric circulations and it causes the Pacific jet stream to dip closer to Texas, causes our temperatures to fall, and also kind of a more active weather pattern, too.
So more rain chances, even more snow chances during an El Niño winter as well.
When is this change supposed to kick in? When will we start to see the effects of this El Niño?
Right, so during the summer, this coming summer, it’s looking like it’s gonna be a neutral pattern. So neither La Niña or El Niño.
And then by the time we get into the fall, say about October, NOAA is now predicting that there’s a 60% chance that will have an El Niño weather pattern by fall of this coming year. And that likely will even continue to increase as we go into the winter.
So right now, at least a 60 percent chance of an El Niño, and that even could go higher as we get closer to fall and winter.
You mentioned that in an El Niño situation, weather tends to be a little bit more active. Does that mean severe? I mean, should we be bracing for, for instance, more severe hurricane season, for example?
No, not quite. Mainly, El Niño, the biggest impacts happen in the winter, first of all. And so the main things we’re going to see is by next winter with an El Niño, you’re really looking at a more active weather pattern with more rain chances, colder temperatures, potentially even more snowfall across parts of Texas, particularly North Texas, where they see more snow than the southern half of the state.
Hurricane season, there’s not a huge connection with El Niño and La Niña. Sometimes La Niña can produce a little bit of a more active season, but it’s a little less predictable in terms of hurricanes and severe thunderstorms, which are kind of more on a small scale.
What should we be bracing for as a practical matter or maybe considering as a practical matter? I guess taking some of the heavier sweaters out for next winter, perhaps.
I wonder if there’s anything more serious?
I mean, right now there’s nothing to kind of brace for or kind of panic about because El Niño and La Niña, there’s no guarantee that you’re going to see this particular type of weather.
But really, it only gives you a better chance. Say, for instance – I’m going to give a football analogy – and normally you have a first and 10, 10 yards to get to a first down. If you have an El Niño, it’s more like a first in five. So there’s a better chance that you get that first down.
And so with an El Niño, there’s a better chance that we’re going to have colder and wetter winter weather next year. But it’s not a guarantee.
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