A strengthening Super El Niño is expected to have major implications for winter weather in the United States, with the strongest effects likely to show up during winter, when El Niño peaks in strength and its influence on global weather is most pronounced.
Who Gets Hit First
Nat Johnson, a meteorologist with the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, called the coming system "something that’s very unusual, if not a once in a lifetime type of (strength)." That’s the language of a scientist watching a powerful climate cycle gather force while ordinary people are left to ride out the consequences. NOAA says a historically strong El Niño does not mean historically intense weather and climate impacts will unfold, only that the odds of certain weather patterns increase. Odds, in other words, for the people who have to live under them.
It is forecast to become a Super El Niño no later than October and has a nearly 70% chance by year-end of becoming the strongest El Niño on record. The timing matters. The strongest effects are likely to show up during winter, when El Niño peaks in strength and its influence on global weather is most pronounced.
What the Forecast Says
A typical El Niño winter sends the jet stream south of its normal position and into the southern tier of the US. NOAA says that usually brings more storms and wetter and cooler weather to southern portions of the country, while northern areas turn drier and warmer. Snow-loving Northeasterners typically see less snow on average during strong El Niño winters. The Southeast and parts of the southern Plains often get the opposite pattern, with cooler temperatures and increased precipitation setting the table for snow, sleet and freezing rain. Exactly how hard it ends up wintering in those areas depends on how cold it gets.
El Niño also affects severe thunderstorms, which normally pick up again near and along the Gulf Coast from late fall to early winter after peaking in spring. Michael Tippett, a climate scientist at Columbia University, said El Niño puts Florida at a particularly higher risk of them during the winter, while other parts of the Gulf Coast are less active than normal. The weather system doesn’t ask permission. It just rearranges risk, and the people below the forecast line pay the price.
NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center is already looking ahead with December through February forecasts for temperature and precipitation that show hallmarks of El Niño. The highest probabilities for above average temperatures stretch across the entire northern tier, including the area from the Pacific Northwest to the Midwest that is typically warmer during El Niño winter. Warmer-than-normal temperatures are possible over more than half of the Lower 48.
The Climate Burden Below
The article also notes that a warming world driven by fossil fuel pollution is always playing a role, and that winter is the fastest-warming season for most of the US, according to an analysis from the nonprofit research group Climate Central. That means the climate crisis isn’t some separate force floating above society. It’s tied to fossil fuel pollution, and the damage lands on communities already forced to absorb the fallout.
Precipitation trends this winter also carry the El Niño signature. Wetter than normal weather is possible across a wide expanse of the US, including Southern California, the entire southern tier states and even the East Coast, with the highest confidence centered on the Southeast. Areas forecast to be drier than normal are confined to the northern tier, where it is also expected to be hotter, and hot and dry is not the combination that will produce snow.
Research shows a warming climate has also affected snowfall over the decades. Annual snow amounts have dropped in nearly two-thirds of the US since 1970, according to Climate Central. That’s 56 years of shrinking snowpack and shifting seasons, with the burden spread unevenly and the consequences landing hardest where people have the least control over the forces shaping their weather.
Only time will tell how wintry this winter will be, but El Niño will almost certainly be a main player alongside the warming climate. The forecast is already written in probabilities. The people living through it won’t get a vote.