With all the hype about this year’s massive El Niño, the big question is, “Where’s the rain?”
Southern California weather expert Bill Patzert, a climatologist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge, said, “My answer is, be a little patient.”
He pointed to the last big El Niños in 1982-83 and 1997-98, both of which brought copious amounts of rain.
“In 1983, rain began in January and in 1998 the deluge came in February,” he said, calling this “the lull before the storm.”
El Niños, a periodic warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean — named by South American fishermen who noted their arrival coincided with Christmas — typically bring rain to California. Sometimes, as with bigger El Niños, a lot of rain.
This year’s El Niño “continues to intensify,” said Patzert. “It’s in record territory in size and temperature.”
One reason the current El Niño has been so much hyped by the media is because the two previous big El Niños were not preceded by a drought, he noted.
“Everybody’s hyperventilating. Everybody’s anticipating the chaos. Floods. Mudslides.”
Patzert, an engaging sort who confessed he’s guilty of coining the term “Godzilla” to describe this El Niño, said the recent storms that battered the Pacific Northwest are not related to El Niño but are “an atmospheric river” coming out of the Gulf of Alaska.
On the other hand, heavy rains that hammered drought-stricken Texas earlier this year, causing flooding, are El Niño-related, he said. Riding the subtropical jet stream, they proved to be that state’s “drought-buster.”
“There’s an old adage,” he said. “Great droughts end in great floods.”
Of this year’s El Niño, he said, despite December’s rainless days, “It’s the great wet hope for drought relief.”
— Sally Cappon is a Noozhawk Contributing Writer.