El Nino Forecast: Maybe Not Such A Big Deal After All

El Nino is characterized by unusually warm water
in the Eastern Pacific near the west coast of South America.  

Us weather geeks earlier this year were getting our pants in a knot because climate scientists were predicting - with quite a bit of confidence -a big El Nino later this year.

El Ninos are periodic spells of unusually warm water in the eastern Pacific Ocean.

You might say "Who cares?" to that until you realize an El Nino, especially a strong one, can really mess with weather worldwide.

One thing El Ninos so is give a boost to worldwide temperatures, at least on average. Combine a big El Nino with global warming and you'd get the hottest year on record.

Some forecasters had been saying 2015 could be by far the globe's toastiest year, if the strong El Nino developed.

Now, however, this Big Bad El Nino might turn out to be a wimp, after all. Or it might even turn out to be nonexistent.

NOAA's Climate Prediction Center has lowered the chances of an El Nino late this fall or winter to about 65 percent. They had been touting an 80 percent liklihood earlier this year.

That's still a good chance that El Nino will come around after all. There are indications that the eastern Pacific will make another attempt to warm up later this year.

If the El Nino is strong, chances are California would be socked with some torrential winter storms, which would be great news given the epic drought there.

If the El Nino is weak, or doesn't happen, then the California drought, already the worst since about 1160 according to some scientist, would drag on.

All this uncertainty goes to show you that climate scientists definitely have the broad picture nailed when it comes to global warming and global weather, ocean and wind patterns.

But the details are tricky, so we'll just have to wait and see if an El Nino arrives, and brings us a bout of global weirding in the weather department.


Now, the