NOAA: The History of El Nino in the USA By this point, most of you have heard that it looks like El Niño is coming, and maybe you’re wondering why you should care. After all, why should it matter if the tropical Pacific Ocean becomes warmer than average? That’s thousands of miles away from the continental United States. Well, it turns out that El Niño often results in changes in the patterns of precipitation and temperature across many parts of the globe, including North America (Ropelewski and Halpert 1987, Halpert and Ropelewski 1992). We’re all wondering what will happen to the USA this winter with the strong El Nino on the way. NOAA breaks it down for us here by showing […] Weather SnowBrains | September 10, 2015 1 Comment
VIDEO: Strong El Nino Should Mean La Nina Next Winter This video is a candid peak into the mind of long range Tahoe forecaster Brian Allegrato’s brain. He drops some great info in this video but our favorite part is when he tells us how these Strong El Nino’s typically convert into Strong La Nina’s the following year. SnowBrains | September 7, 2015 4 Comments
NOAA VIDEO: What El Nino Means for California NOAA just released a quick video update about the coming El Nino, Northern California, Southern California and how they’ll all interact this coming winter. In the past years, NOAA has been claiming that there have been 5 strong El Nino’s on record in California and that only one of them produced below average precipitation. In this video, they […] SnowBrains | September 3, 2015 0 Comments
NOAA Video: “What El Nino Means for the Sierra Nevada, CA/NV” This video is NOAA’s Reno office keeping it real about what this winter’s El Nino will mean for the Sierra Nevada. Yep, there is a chance that this year will be an above average precipitation winter for the Sierra Nevada in CA. It also may not be. The Blob is the scary piece of the puzzle this year. NOAA has never seen anything like The Blob. The Blob may keep the frightening Ridiculously Resilient Ridge that has been blocking storms from reaching the Sierra Nevada mountains. Weather Miles Clark | August 20, 2015 0 Comments
EL NINO IS COMING!!! Kudos to Squaw Valley’s marketing department. This is actually pretty funny. Chris Farley, me miss you. El Nino, we miss you, too. SnowBrains | August 14, 2015 4 Comments
NOAA: What El Nino & La Nina Mean for Northern California NOAA is calling for a strong El Nino this winter. NOAA in California is trying to tell us that just because it’s going to be a strong El Nino doesn’t mean that we’ll get above average snowfall this coming winter. They’re also telling us that El Nino doesn’t generally favor an above average precipitation winter in northern California while at the same time La Nina doesn’t favor an above average precipitation winter either. […] SnowBrains | August 14, 2015 3 Comments
Official NOAA August 2015 El Nino Update: Odds Are Good for California NOAA just released their latest El Nino update. They’re calling it Supercalifragilisticexpealidocious, which we think is a good sign. They expect that the current El Nino will peak in late fall/early winter and that it will be one of the strongest El Nino ever recorded. As of August, NOAA and IRI forecasters are predicting this El Niño will peak in the late fall/early winter with 3-month-average sea surface temperatures in the Niño3.4 region near or exceeding 2.0°C (3.6°F) above normal. If this forecast comes true, it will place the 2015 event among the strongest El Niños in the (admittedly short) 1950-2015 historical record. What would this mean for expected impacts in the United States? Weather SnowBrains | August 13, 2015 3 Comments
What a Strong El Nino Means for Utah: In case you haven’t heard, El Nino is here now, it’s getting stronger, and the this El Nino may be the strongest on record. We know that in California, 4 of the 5 strong El Ninos on record have resulted in above average precipitation, but what does it mean for our snow-crazed friends in Utah? The only information we’ve been able to dig up so far is the last 5 strong El Nino snow totals at the Alta Guard station in Alta, Utah. The Alta Guard station sees an average annual snowfall of 499″. Two of the three strong El Nino’s produced below average snowfall, but not much below. 433″ in 65/66 and […] Weather SnowBrains | August 7, 2015 2 Comments