What does El Nino mean for us?
By now you have probably been inundated with talk of the
“forecasted El Nino” and thoughts of record breaking snowfall and epic years
come to mind. Well if you live in
Northern Arizona, Southwestern Colorado or Northern New Mexico get ready,
statistically, El Nino is all the rage but what about if you frequent the awe
inspiring terrain of the Central Sierra.
For those of us who are lucky enough to have deep blue views of Lake
Tahoe in our backyards, El Nino and ENSO in general can be much less of a sure
thing. In fact, except for during strong
ENSO years there isn’t a strong relationship between El Nino and precipitation
in the Central Sierra (see Figure 1). According
to the National Weather Service’s Sacramento Office, four out of five strong El
Nino’s since 1950 have brought above average precipitation to the area. Meanwhile five out of seven of the strong La
Nina’s during the same time period have also brought above average
precipitation. The data and plots can be
found here: http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/sto/climate/ENSO.php
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Figure 1 [click for larger image] |
Figure 1 only includes strong ENSO data back to 1950 and it
should also be noted that measurements prior to 1946 might be less accurate and
thus the mean total snowfall and maximum snow depths may not be completely
accurate.
So what does it mean for this winter???
Well in reality, it just means that we have no
way of really knowing what is going to happen this winter in the Central
Sierra. In case this isn’t enough proof
check out the October-March precipitation in Reno, NV (Figure 2, compliments of
WRCC) and Blue Canyon, CA (Figure 3, compliments of NWS Sacramento) based on
ENSO. There is absolutely no
relationship between ENSO and precipitation amount in Reno.
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Figure 2 |
Bottom Line: The lack of signal between ENSO and precipitation makes it extremely difficult to predict this or any winter's snowfall in the Sierra/Tahoe region.
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