Hey, remember all those times that the people who get paid to predict the weather said that El Niño was going to bring a ridiculous amount of rain to Southern California? Yeah, well, those predictions turned out to be worse than that awful Batman vs. Superman movie. So, what the hell happened?
The National Weather Service offered up this explanation, via LA Times:
Despite plenty of indicators suggesting that the 2015-16 El Niño rains would be as strong — if not stronger — than previous Southland El Niños, heavy precipitation failed to materialize. Instead, the storms flowed north from the Bay Area to Washington, drenching the Northern Sierra Nevada and refilling some of the state’s biggest reservoirs.
In recapping this year’s El Niño phenomena — the first since the winter of 1997-98 — the National Weather Service said the pattern “flipped” from prior El Niños that left the Northwest relatively parched and the Southwest soaking wet.
And boy, how it flipped. While the experts thought February would be the wettest month of the year because of El Niño, it ended up being the driest in 30 years.
Oops.
Scientists say that this partly because of “the blob”…yes you read that right:
Data suggests this was due in part to “the blob,” an unrelated warming of the waters along the North American West Coast from Alaska south to the Baja California Peninsula. The warmer waters off Baja may have helped “enhance” a high pressure ridge that stretched up to California, diverting incoming storms to the north, the weather service said.
A La Niña is now being predicted for the winter by the National Weather Service, which would mean a drier than average winter – so we should probably just all go ahead and expect a ton of rain and snow.
