How upcoming Super El Niño could impact WA weather patterns

Well, winter doesn't officially arrive for another month, but we're starting to see some winter weather in the mountains and cooler, wetter conditions in the lowlands. And in its latest report, the Climate Prediction Center is forecasting a drier and warmer winter than average in the Pacific Northwest. Chief Meteorologist Brian McMillan has more on how this upcoming Super El Nino could impact weather patterns around the country and right here at home. Brian. That's right. I want to talk to state climatologist here, Guillaume Mauger, and he has a look, kind of a greater look here at what's happening as we introduce this super El Nino. Guillaume, thank you so much for joining us this morning. Thanks for having me. Okay, so what is a super El Nino? What makes this El Nino super? Yeah, so, I mean, it's a small detail, but the technical term is very strong. And it just means that this one, you know, an El Nino is any time the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean gets really warm compared to normal. This one we're calling the super, the technical term very strong. Like I said, it's because it's just way warmer than normal, right? And possibly record-breaking at this point. And so we're talking ocean temperatures on the surface. Is that correct? That's right. It does go down to some depth, the extra warm waters. But where you really see it is at the surface. That's where the differences are the biggest. Okay, and we just saw the Climate Prediction Center, which typically does more longer range forecasts, just released their forecast for November, December, and January. It does look a little bit warmer and drier than average here in the Pacific Northwest, typical for an El Nino pattern. What does that mean for the Pacific Northwest? Does that mean it's always going to be drier and always going to be warmer than average? Yeah, you're hinting at the right thing, right? It's weather. It's hard to predict. we can have exceptions right um it tilts the odds so it means a higher chance of warmer it might mean a higher chance of drier the problem with el nino's is that we've only had a couple dozen that we've watched they've been able to observe and so we don't have big sample size so there can be exceptions we don't really know exactly what the rule is but there seems to be a tendency towards warmer than normal conditions that's pretty clear in the data um drier than normal, not as clear. So I think that's not as safe of a bet, but it seems to lean that way as well. A lot of my skiing and snowboarding friends come up to me or give me calls or text messages and they're asking, all right, should I buy that season pass this year? So what do things look like in the cascades here this year for skiers and snowboarders in particular? Okay, well, like I said, first of all, it's tilting of the odds, right? Last year was a La Nina and we had a bad snow year, right? And you'd expect the opposite during a typical La Nina. We could have the same kind of exception this year. We don't know for sure. But it's tilting the odds towards warmer conditions. That means a higher than normal snow line. That means we might get rain at Snoqualmie Pass more often than we'd want, right? It generally means we'd have less snow. And the data does back that up. I'll just say, you know, if you look at snowpack at places like Snoqualmie Pass and across the Cascades, it tends to be lower on average during El Nino years. Like I said, we won't know. till we see it, but that's the direction that things are leaning. Higher snow line means less of a chance too of lowland snow. I know the kids are waiting for those snow days. Didn't get one last year either. All right, so how could a drier and potentially warmer winter, how could that have lasting impacts on the spring and summer months as well? Yeah, so snow is nature's water bottle, right? So we rely on snowpack for having enough water in our streams, especially in spring and early summer. Just to put some numbers on that, we got a bunch of big reservoirs in the state. They hold anywhere from a third to half of what the snowpack holds at the end of winter, right? So they're small compared to what the snow is doing. So when we have less snow, we really feel it. Okay. What does this mean for other areas of the country potentially? Yeah. So I think Southern California, the last time we had i should first say a big el nino does not necessarily mean big impacts for us right and that's just because it's got to translate from the tropics to here and things can happen right um but uh you know when we have big el ninos they often affect southern california making it wetter that's in the forecast as well um you know one thing that we've already seen this summer is a a pretty uh light hurricane season and that's typical during an el nino is that hurricanes are suppressed on the Atlantic. They tend to be bigger on the Pacific, and we've seen that too. And then we do generally see cooler than normal temperatures across the South during El Nino. But again, these are all things where the odds are tilted one way, but it's a little hard to know what to expect. And finally, how could this impact our marine life? Because the waters get a little bit warmer, and could we potentially see some sea life that maybe would be off the coast of California, up a little farther north, or things like that. How does this impact the creatures in our waters? Yeah, so the big effects on temperature really are in the tropical Pacific. We do see effects here sometimes, but they're not as consistent, just because the ocean's big, it's doing different things up here. But we do see somewhat warmer temperatures over this summer, and that can, like you're saying affect the ranges of some species. But just like I said, I think the main thing to remember is that this is a tropical Pacific Ocean effect. What we see up here in the offshore of the Northwest is going to be different. Well, going to be an interesting winter as it always is around here. Washington State climatologist Guillaume Mauger, thank you so much for joining us here this morning. I want to send it over. Yes, thank you. All right, let's send it out over to Adam Gerke.