A look at 2023's extreme weather and what's ahead for Washington's El Niño pattern | ARC Seattle

Download 2023 is coming gone, but we want to take a moment to look back at the record number of weather events that hit the world. There were a lot of them from flooding to extreme heat, wildfires and ice storms. We also want to look ahead. So we're prepared for extreme weather here in the new year 2024. So 2023 sort of blew the record book in terms of climate disasters, in terms of extreme heat, extreme rainfall and and all kinds of these weather events that we anticipate happening more and more frequently as climate changes. So if we want to think about a window of environmental disasters, as it were, in terms of our ability to model it, it would look something like this. So you've got a wide window of our predicted weather. 2023 was pinned right to the top of that, like very much out of the ordinary, but not out of our range of understanding of what climate extremes might be. 2024 is geared to be about the same because it's driven also by a larger scale climate pattern called El Nino. We should care about these weather extremes because they're no longer going to be extreme in the future. They're going to be kind of our new normal, which means that we have to prepare our own environment systems and our cities and towns to manage these extremes. A warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor and it also changes the weather patterns a little bit. So we've seen a couple things. One is extreme heat, of course. We are seeing what are called stalled highs and stalled lows. That means that there will be areas where they get extremely dry and other areas where you get a ton of rainfall. And these are all very characteristic of climate change. So El Nino Southern Oscillation starts with the climate pattern in the Pacific Ocean and extends globally. So it flip-flops between extremes and then sometimes it's in the middle. So La Nina is the extreme cold, in a sense. El Nino is extreme warm and sometimes we're sort of in the middle. Right now we're pretty heavily into El Nino and 2024 is likely to be one as well. They tend to last for a couple years. It's warming a little bit earlier than it used to. And there's not nearly as much frost season as there used to be. So our temperature seasons have changed, yet the sunlight seasons haven't. We still rotate around the sun like we had before, which means that we're getting some mismatch between what animals need, particularly migratory animals, and what's out there on the landscape. So some migratory birds are coming and the worm and seed season has already passed. So they can become starved, actually, during their migration. We really have agency in this, right? We turn off the carbon dial to stop burning fossil fuels and we stop the temperature increase. However, the temperature increase is here with us. So these extreme weather events are things that we have to develop resilience toward, and not only in the developed world but in the developing world. And with that, we want to bring in one of our experts, meteorologist Rebecca Stevenson. Rebecca, we just heard about some of the major weather disasters from this year. Looking ahead, what are some of the major weather events that will affect us right here in the Pacific Northwest? Well, you know, one thing, Preston, we were talking a lot about was the El Nino cycle, which is essentially the ocean interacts with the atmosphere and we can have that interaction create a storm track that changes. So when we're looking at El Nino, the most typical setup that we have is that the Pacific jet stream that normally is focused towards us here in Washington State and in Oregon, well, now it's more of a direct southerly motion right into California and across parts of the southern Midwest and into the southeast. And that cold polar jet stream stays well up into Canada around the Hudson Bay. So we end up being a little warmer than normal around the Pacific Northwest. And this is a trend that El Nino sets up. And we know this because we've observed it over 100 years. We assess what are the most common things that happen in El Nino weather. So the impacts we're going to be looking for, well, it's going to be potential impact of high to severe and snowpack, meaning that we could have an extremely low snowpack, which will impact our water supply. And then we're looking at the potential of being drier than normal, which could potentially bring in some drought, then wind damage. That's always going to be a factor because of the way storms typically track through the Pacific Ocean. We're still going to have the risk of wind and flooding and drought and snowpack and heavy rain. That's the variability of weather. It's so variable that we even have El Ninos that turn out so much cooler than normal, even when it's an El Nino and we expect warmer than normal conditions. So, for instance, one of the typical things that we see is a lower snow depth or a lower snowpack. And right now, January 1st, you can see our snowpack right around 36.2 percent of the Pacific Northwest is covered with snow. But the last three years, we had an unprecedented La Nina every year for the last three. And you can see the percentage of snow was much higher than what we've got right now. On January 1st of the last three years, in fact, one year, 2022, we had almost 100 percent of our snowpack by this date. So our snowpacks will be a little bit lesser typically in El Nino. And part of the contribution to that is the warmer temperatures that we get, because that means higher snow levels, meaning we'll have some high elevation snow, but we don't necessarily get it here in the lowlands. And that will impact, of course, maybe a little more water around into the rivers, hopefully. But typically, this fact that we're going to have odds this year for above normal temperatures, 50 to 60 percent odds of above normal. And when you look at precipitation, notice all that rain. It's way above normal expected here for 2024 in California, Nevada, Utah and the Southwest. But we have equal chances in western Washington of above, below or just normal precipitation. But more likely because of topography and the setup, we're going to be drier than normal east of the Cascades into the Rockies. So in 2024 weather, when we talk about extremes, the impact that we could have from El Nino, we're going to be talking about pest extermination, because when we don't get hard freezes here in the Northwest, we get more bugs and mice and all kinds of different, you know, it does impact the birds and we see different bird populations than typical. But it also with the pest extermination issue that can bring in problems with farming and all the product that they're trying to produce. So the fruits and vegetables farm to table can be impacted because they have too much dry weather or the heat is too much and it overcomes their crop. So they have to try to plan for this season ahead. And so we're going to be receiving this and be paying more for it. Most likely if we want to keep and maintain the seasonal vegetables and fruits, but heating and cooling Preston, that's a big part of this too, because if we're warmer in the Pacific Northwest, we don't have a lot of air conditioning out here. So our heating and cooling costs go way up and that means more money for the folks in that business. Yeah. And it's interesting you bring up the pet pest extermination. I think last night I saw a rat running across our backyard cameras when I'm like, what is it doing back there? It should be cold right now. And there's more moss also growing in the backyard as well. So it's kind of interesting to see these weather changes, I guess, if you will. But the other question I had just, I was just curious, do these have any connection, the La Nina's and El Nino's? So if we have an El Nino this year, does it mean we'll have one next year? Because we've had three La Nina's in a row. What does that mean? Well, the three La Nina's in a row were very, very unique. It's not a usual happenstance kind of thing. Usually we'll get say an El Nino one year and we might even get two El Nino's in a row. But a lot of times the ocean temperatures, they're in flux and they are variable just like our weather patterns. So we could get El Nino the next year, it goes to a neutral year. There's no real great impact or extreme trend that we can see that may be happening. But then the year after that, we'll get a La Nina. So we could get a couple of one cycle in a row or they could change up every other year. It's really very variable in that manner. And we have to watch temperatures in a specific area of the Pacific Ocean to try to detect where energy is going to be released in the Pacific Ocean. Because that, wherever that energy goes up, that's going to start to impact the jet stream and the balance of temperature across the globe. So I keep wondering, is it going to get any better? And I saw some of the snow quality today, just talking about the kind of their lack of snowpack and how people were describing the runs. And, you know, when we talk about the months ahead here in 2024, does it get any better or does do places like summit keep struggling? Well, we may be seeing a particular stretch where the summit could keep struggling, but I can tell you from looking at forecast solutions moving ahead into the next month, it is looking like we will have some snow. We will get mountain snow and we will have periods of cooler temperatures. We just may not be getting an excessive amount of snowpack and hold on to it all the way to spring. For instance, we may get a whole bunch of snow, have a great snowpack, and then all of a sudden the warming starts to melt it off early. So there's a couple of different solutions that could happen, but ultimately we do have that limited few months where the temperatures are cool enough to get all the mountain snowpack in place before summertime starts pushing in. So it's right now the jury's still out on this one, but we certainly have had enough of a stretch of not much snow in the mountains to think, well, we really need whatever we can get now. Meteorologist Rebecca Stevenson, our expert. Thank you, Rebecca, some very valuable information. We'll see you in a little bit.