We’ve reached the point of no return.
The tiny chance that the Monster Godzilla Bruce Lee Chris Farley El Niño might cancel its highly anticipated trip to the West Coast this winter is gone, according to Bill Patzert, climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab. “There’s no longer a possibility that El Niño wimps out at this point,” he told the LA Times. “It’s too big to fail.”
It’s so big that weather across North America is going to be impacted. It’s “definitely not going to be normal,” he said.
El Niño conditions are currently being brewed by particularly large swath of extra-warm sea surface temperatures in the Eastern Pacific. The area continues to grow larger and larger, fueling the escalating predictions for the climate event. Even if those ocean temps started to plummet now (which they aren’t), they would still send heavy rain to the continent.
While all signs point to a wet winter, Patzert also cautions Californians not to get too complacent. The record-breaking El Niño in 1997-1998 may have brought heavy, often devastating rains, but it was followed by La Niña, a surge of abnormally dry weather.
[LA Times]
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