El Niño will upend winter weather in the US. Here’s who will feel it the most

By Meteorologist Mary Gilbert, CNN

(CNN) — The burgeoning Super El Niño will have major implications for winter weather in the United States.

Winter is not only when this El Niño will peak in strength, but also when its influence on global weather is most pronounced.

🌊 Watch the full Ask a Scientist about El Niño interview only in the CNN Weather app. 👨🏻‍🔬

El Niño is a natural climate cycle marked by warmer than average water temperatures along the equator in the Pacific Ocean. The warmer water triggers corresponding shifts in the atmosphere that have a domino-like influence on weather patterns around the globe – usually in ways that are largely predictable well in advance.

The stronger an El Niño is, the more likely these expected weather patterns will play out. And this one could be going for gold.

It’s strengthening rapidly, 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.

This potentially record-breaking El Niño is “something that’s very unusual, if not a once in a lifetime type of (strength),” according to Nat Johnson, a meteorologist with the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

It’s important to note that a historically strong El Niño does not mean that historically intense weather and climate impacts will unfold — it’s just increasing the odds that certain weather patterns will play out, NOAA says.

Here’s what the US could experience this winter courtesy of El Niño.

What a typical El Niño winter looks like

No two El Niño winters are the same, but most have temperature and precipitation trends in common. That’s because El Niño typically sends the jet stream — the cross-country river of air that storms flow through — south of its normal position and into the southern tier of the US.

The result tends to be more storms and wetter and cooler weather in southern portions of the country, while northern ones turn drier and warmer, according to NOAA. (Yes, snow-loving Northeasterners, that means less snow on average during strong El Niño winters.)

The opposite is true for the Southeast and parts of the southern Plains, where El Nino’s cooler trend and increased precipitation set the table for snow, sleet and freezing rain. Exactly how hard it ends up wintering in these areas will depend on how cold it gets.

Then there’s the impact on severe thunderstorms, which after peaking in spring, normally pick up steam again near and along the Gulf Coast from late fall to early winter.

El Niño puts Florida at a particularly higher risk of them during the winter. The script flips in other parts of the Gulf Coast, which are less active than normal, according to Michael Tippett, a climate scientist at Columbia University.

An early winter forecast for this atypical El Niño

We’re still months out from winter, but NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center is always looking ahead. Their December through February forecasts for both temperature and precipitation are showing hallmarks of El Niño.

The highest probabilities for above average temperatures stretch across the entire northern tier. This includes the area from the Pacific Northwest to Midwest that’s typically warmer during El Niño winter.

Notably, warmer-than-normal temperatures are possible over more than half of the Lower 48. El Niño can’t be blamed for everything — a world warming due to fossil fuel pollution is always playing a role. Winter is the fastest-warming season for most of the US, according to an analysis from the non-profit research group Climate Central.

Precipitation trends this winter also have the El Niño watermark. Wetter than normal weather is possible for a wide expanse of the US, including Southern California, the entire southern tier states and even the East Coast. The highest confidence so far in these conditions is centered on the Southeast.

The areas forecast to be drier than normal aren’t quite perfectly in sync with El Niño, but they are confined to the northern tier, where it is expected to be hotter. And hot and dry is not the combination that will produce snow.

As with winter temperatures, research shows a warming climate has also impacted snowfall over the decades. Annual snow amounts have dropped in nearly two-thirds of the US since 1970, according to Climate Central.

Only time will tell just how wintry this winter will be, but El Niño will almost certainly be a main player alongside our warming climate.

The-CNN-Wire
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