National forecasters announced that an El Niño weather pattern is gaining strength, making people believe that will be a wet winter, especially since the temperature stopped being as high as it used to, and people have seen a few raindrops around Sacramento.
But the announced phenomenon is late and, according to forecasters, El Niño is not likely to affect California, yet.
What is El Niño?
This is a warming of the water off the Pacific coast of South America. El Niño rains are well-known for their strength, ranging from weak to very strong.
The past winter was a weak one but now, a stronger El Niño appears to be expected. It is also known that there aren’t two alike.
When are El Niño rains expected?
According to the forecast, El Niño rains had developed in March. Recently National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that El Niño is strengthening.
This is the reason why specialists believe there is more than 90 percent chance for this to continue through next winter in the Northern Hemisphere.
In addition, forecasters stated that there is an impressive chance chance it will last into the early spring of 2016.
Furthermore, in accordance with the federal Climate Prediction Center there is a possibility that many other things affect California’s rainy season, since the weather is unpredictable, offering no guarantees.
So, we should expect the El Niño when the water will be warm enough. It was quite warm, but not enough, so it didn’t trigger important changes in the wind directions, until now. However this year, it will definitely happen.
Is California’s Drought Ending?
People hope the wet season will end the drought California has been suffering of. However in order for this to be possible, a lot of cold enough storms able to bulk up the Sierra snowpack are needed. If it happens, the melting spring snow will continue to fill reservoirs.
And even with all of these happening there is no guarantee that the deficits created by the drought would disappear. As far as we know, the largest El Niño rains couldn’t erase California’s already famous drought. So, is this time going to be different?
