For months, farmers and skiers were in a mood of gleeful anticipation with an El Ni\u00f1o year on the horizon, which might mean a heavier snow winter.<\/p>\n
Then we waited and waited and finally, on March 5, meteorologists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that El Ni\u00f1o conditions had finally arrived \u2013 after winter was almost over.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been flirting with the threshold on and off almost since last spring,\u201d said Colorado State Climatologist Nolan J. Doesken, who\u2019s based at the Colorado Climate Center at Colorado State University. \u201cLast spring, we got all excited and thought we might be ramping up to a very favorable winter, but it didn\u2019t happen. Now we\u2019ve gently crossed the threshold.\u201d<\/p>\n
Very specific conditions must exist to say we\u2019re in an El Ni\u00f1o weather pattern. Ocean surface temperatures in a specific part of the Pacific Ocean, called the Ni\u00f1o 3.4 Index, must increase more than 0.5 degrees Celsius. But it\u2019s what meteorologists call a coupled phenomenon, NOAA said, where the atmosphere in the area also has to warm up, and conditions need to indicate that it will stay at those temperatures for the next several seasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the last six weeks, we\u2019ve been starting to see some atmospheric response,\u201d said Joe Ramey, a meteorologist with the Grand Junction office of the National Weather Service, who translates climate date into predictions for Western Colorado. \u201cBut different meteorologists have different definitions for what has to happen to be in El Ni\u00f1o conditions. The Japanese called it a month or two ago. What a spring El Ni\u00f1o will mean compared to a fall one is uncertain.\u201d<\/p>\n
What will happen here?<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it keeps on, it\u2019s a little more favorable for wet spring storms rather than dusty wind storms,\u201d Doesken said.<\/p>\n
Norv Larson, one of Ramey\u2019s meteorologist colleagues based in in Grand Junction, isn\u2019t so sure we\u2019ll see any extra moisture at all.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you look at El Ni\u00f1o predictions on the map, you see bull\u2019s-eyes on some areas, but we\u2019re in the area in-between,\u201d he said. \u201cIt may well be that there\u2019s not more moisture than normal, and there\u2019s not less moisture, either.\u201d<\/p>\n
In other words, the weather may be normal \u2013 a dry spring.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery El Ni\u00f1o has its own flavor,\u201d said Ramey, who\u2019s been tracking El Ni\u00f1os since he was in college. \u201cThere\u2019s generally very little summer response to El Ni\u00f1o dynamical climate models, although it may mean an early start to the monsoon season.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018One step closer to La Ni\u00f1a\u2019<\/p>\n
Some prognosticators are saying this may be a two-year El Ni\u00f1o.<\/p>\n
\u201cLa Ni\u00f1a tends to be more likely to last longer,\u201d Doesken said, \u201cand El Ni\u00f1o tends to be shorter, but that\u2019s not always the case. I\u2019d be happy to have another year of El Ni\u00f1o.\u201d<\/p>\n
If it is the start of a curtailed El Ni\u00f1o, Doesken said, it may mean we\u2019re \u201cone step closer to La Ni\u00f1a conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s when we really start worrying about drought in Southwest Colorado,\u201d he said. \u201cYou haven\u2019t really recovered from the drought of the last few years.\u201d<\/p>\n
What we do need to worry about is continuing warmer temperatures, Doesken said. La Plata County just finished a winter that was 5 degrees above normal over the three-month period from December through February.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve been on the warm side for several years, and I\u2019m definitely concerned that temperatures will be on the hot side for the coming year,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019re more likely to have the thermostat turned up and be very much warmer than average temperatures.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
it mean for SW Colorado? Maybe a wet spring<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-113983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113983\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113983"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=113983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}