This Year Looks Just Like 1997's Insanely Terrible El Niño
This year’s
winter “will definitely not be normal,” NASA has said. It is, however,
awfully familiar. It’s not just the sea surface heights, like those
above, that look alike—NOAA and NASA both confirm that they’re also
seeing wind patterns and water temperatures that look eerily similar to
the ‘97 conditions. Researchers have been noting the budding
similarities between 1997’s El Nino and our current conditions since
early last year. With El Niño definitely having kicked off now, though,
researchers are saying it will almost certainly peak this winter. So
what did we get last time an El Niño that looked like this hit hard in
the winter? 1997-1998 was one of the warmest and wettest winters we’d
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This Year Looks Just Like 1997's Insanely Terrible El Niño
This year’s winter “will definitely not be normal,” NASA has said. It is, however, awfully familiar.
It’s not just the sea surface heights, like those above, that look alike—NOAA and NASA both confirm that they’re also seeing wind patterns and water temperatures that look eerily similar to the ‘97 conditions.
Researchers have been noting the budding similarities between 1997’s El Nino
and our current conditions since early last year. With El Niño
definitely having kicked off now, though, researchers are saying it will
almost certainly peak this winter. So what did we get last time an El
Niño that looked like this hit hard in the winter?
1997-1998 was one of the warmest and wettest winters we’d seen over a century.
There were record-breaking levels of snow, sleet, and rain all over the
country. There were deadly floods in California, intense ice storms in
the East, and a rash of tornadoes in Florida.
Exactly
what particular cocktail of winter storms El Niño is mixing this year is
still unclear—but if history is any guide, it will be a tough one.
Top
image: NASA Earth Observatory map by Jesse Allen, using Jason-2 and
TOPEX/Posideon data provided by Akiko Kayashi and Bill Patzert, NASA/JPL
Ocean Surface Topography Team.
Gizmodo q
Instead you get a couple different (terrible) things happening: In the immediate term, it’s flash-flooding. But also the water washes away so quickly that not only does it not have a chance to soak into the ground, it also takes the top layer of soil with it—and that’s a big problem for an agriculture state.
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This Year Looks Just Like 1997's Insanely Terrible El Niño