00:00It's really, really heavy rainfall, and then you might spend several weeks in a drought.
00:09Just another summer of very little rainfall, high heat.
00:15You can be talking about some pretty big winter storm systems.
00:21Those extremes are swinging more extreme, and they're happening much quicker.
00:35Between a rise in tornadoes, monumental floods, and extreme highs and lows, the U.S. could be in for a
00:42rough weather ride.
00:43They're referring to super and mega El Nino because this one's coming on pretty strong.
00:50Straight Arrow spoke with the National Weather Service about what's got their antennas up this year.
00:54El Nino is a climate pattern marked by unusually warm ocean temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean, extending
01:01toward the coast of South America.
01:03Those warmer waters influence weather patterns around the world, often leading to higher than normal temperatures in many regions.
01:10Think of the atmosphere as a series of ripples across the globe.
01:14Some regions get stuck under hotter, drier patterns, while others see cooler, wetter conditions.
01:20The stronger the pattern, the more extreme those swings can become.
01:24We went from a La Nina over last winter in February, we started to see a pretty rapid swing above
01:33normal.
01:34Those above normal temperatures have just continued to intensify all the way from the west coast of South America, extending
01:42along the equatorial portion of the Pacific and over towards about northeast of Australia.
01:49We continue to see those trends and the probabilities for both categories of strong El Nino and very strong El
01:58Nino continue to increase.
02:00So strong, they say the pattern hasn't been seen in more than a century.
02:05The only thing that really compares to what we may expect or the intensity that we have probabilistic data showing
02:12it could get to is the stuff back in the late 1800s.
02:16That can make predictions more challenging when the need to be accurate is crucial.
02:21According to NOAA, a miscalculation can mean massive economic losses, crop failures and strained water supply and energy grids.
02:29When you're talking about science, what you want to do is try to make that correlation with a really thick
02:36and sound data set.
02:38And we just don't have a lot of data for that.
02:40Not a lot, but enough to give them a hint of what could be coming in a super El Nino
02:45year.
02:46One thing that we do see in some of the data is that when you start to introduce some of
02:52these anomalies over the Pacific,
02:53is you tend to see more intense rainfall on isolated or more local scale type basis here.
03:02Those intensities are great in those locations.
03:06But then what happens in a lot of cases is that you get this really, really heavy rainfall and then
03:12you might spend several weeks in a drought.
03:14Those are the type of variables that are happening.
03:18Those extremes are swinging more extreme and they're happening much quicker.
03:22That could add to the drought, flooding and heat stress in places already dealing with weather challenges.
03:28Out West, where people are hoping for moisture, what happens next depends on how the pattern evolves through the summer.
03:34If we start to get into one of those patterns where we have that big high pressure in the middle
03:42of summer,
03:42that is unfortunate news because that would be just another summer of very little rainfall, high heat.
03:51And, you know, you're just building on top of one problem that's already existed.
03:55And in those areas currently experiencing drought, a few big rain events may not bring relief.
04:01The soil becomes more like a rocky, hard surface when it's dry and you get the drought.
04:06Everything that falls, even if you have six, seven inches of rain, is mostly runoff.
04:11All goes into the rivers or other tributaries.
04:15Moving east along major rivers like the Mississippi and Missouri, forecasters are also watching for floods.
04:21If we do have the river levels that are elevated from rain that are outside the area, that just kind
04:27of puts us more in a cautious approach of keeping an eye on not only rain upstream like it's already
04:35been,
04:36but also rain over the local area to make sure that we don't approach that flooding criteria.
04:41That's one reason forecasters say they're keeping a particularly close eye on the southern U.S.
04:47Southern part of the U.S., they have a pretty decent indicator that they will side or favor with the
04:54higher than normal precipitation.
04:56The National Weather Service expects the south to lean wetter than normal, while parts of the plains could trend hotter
05:02and drier.
05:03On the east coast, an El Nino typically means more coastal flooding.
05:07While Florida might see more rain than normal, a strong high pressure pattern may actually bring relief when it comes
05:14to hurricane season.
05:15It will shear them out or weaken them. It doesn't allow them to become well-established or necessarily stronger in
05:25that sense.
05:26And that's in direct relation to that Doma high pressure, that blocking pattern.
05:31The one thing that we typically say, though, is it only takes one.
05:34The term super El Nino may grab attention, but how it manifests will be different for everyone.
05:40The forecasting science isn't a slam dunk, but one thing is for sure.
05:44The one thing that we can say with almost absolute certainty is that El Ninos do lead to enhancements of
05:52certain extremes.
05:54Whether that's dry or wet, warm or cold, those streams could either be really localized for a certain region.
06:02When I say localized, I mean more regionally in comparison to the globe, but they will be placed somewhere.
06:11There is no water.
06:12There is no water.
06:13There is no water.
06:13No water.
06:14There is no water.
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