El Niño growing into monster
By Mike Moffitt, San Francisco Chronicle
New computer models suggest that the current El Niño formation brewing in the Pacific could become the strongest in recorded history.
The broad swath of warmer-than-usual seawater is spreading and deepening. The two largest concentrations are off the coast of Peru, where water is 4 degrees Centigrade warmer than usual, and just west of Vancouver and Seattle — 3 degrees warmer.
If this El Niño continues to grow, it could surpass the modern record-setting 1997-98 El Niño event, which inundated the Bay Area and the rest of California for months, causing flooding, mudslides and subsidences, and heavy snowfalls in the Sierra.
Bring it on!!!!!!
Yea sure. I’ll believe it when I see it. NOAA said a similar thing last year and… Nothing!
All that dredging for nothing?
I hope this is bigger than the snow storm of the century that closed the schools and city offices last winter.
Keep our fingers crossed. We need the snow/moisture. Yes, a “normal” Sierra winter will catch a lot of folks off guard who don’t remember what real winter was like, but I agree with Nature Bats Last – bring it on. The squirrels are already storing pine nuts around my house so maybe there will be an early & longish winter.
For the last two articles from the SF Chronicle, when I clicked on the links, I got the message to subscribe to see the whole article.
By contract, for this article from SFGate, I was able to read the whole piece. If you are doing something different, thank you. This well researched and thoughtfully written article on likelihood of an upcoming strong El Niño is very relevant to us on many levels.
Before that epic la nina during 2010/11, the squirrel here did a huge cache of pine cones everywhere.
Every year for the thirty++ years I’ve lived here I’ve heard someone comment about how the squirrels are hoarding pine nuts which they say means a big winter approaching.
In my 30++ years of Tahoe life experience I’ve noticed squirrels hoarding pine nuts……EVERY YEAR. That’s what they do, irregardless of what kind of winter we will have.
Lets hope for a real good winter. Pack the mountains with snow and filling the lake and streams.
Hope for snow. OLS