It's getting hot in here
by digby
90 degrees here in Santa Monica today. Not unprecedented for this time of year, but rare ---
But look what's coming:
An El Niño that is among the strongest on record is gaining strength in the Pacific Ocean, and climate scientists say California is likely to face a wet winter.
“There’s no longer a possibility that El Niño wimps out at this point. It’s too big to fail,” said Bill Patzert, climatologist for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge.
“And the winter over North America is definitely not going to be normal,” he said.
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Just three weeks ago, the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center raised the odds of California getting doused with a wetter-than-average winter. Southern California now has more than a 60% chance of a wet winter, a 33% chance of a normal winter and less than a 7% chance of a dry winter.
Not that we don't need the rain. But:
Patzert issued a note of warning to Californians: Don’t think this El Niño spells the end of this state’s punishing four-year drought.
The last record El Niño that ended in 1998 was quickly followed by the arrival of El Niño’s dry sister, La Niña.
“Thinking ahead one year, could we be whiplashed from deluge back to drought again?” Patzert said. “Because remember, La Niña is the diva of drought.”
Patzert said that in the last 140 years in California, seven out of every 10 years are dry, so it would be foolish to declare an end to water conservation during this winter’s rains.
Sigh ...
Let's just hope we don't get hit the way South Carolina got hit this past week. They're still swimming through the streets down there.
There have always been extreme weather events. But it looks like we'd all better get used to having a whole lot more of them. Too bad half the people in the richest most powerful nation on earth are cretins or we might just be able to mitigate this. But hey, stuff happens, right?
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