So you are still asking yourself if El Nino will start affecting us soon? By the time it gets here it’ll be called El Señor? You’re not the only one thinking that but it will start showing up this month as it normally always does. Read on …
Typically El Nino has warmer than average and wetter temperatures, however as stated in the article released awhile back this one will have a colder than normal December along with slightly above to above average rainfall.
Source: https://www.southerncaliforniaweatherforce.com/2015/11/12/final-forecast-southern-california-el-nino-forecast-breakdown-by-month-released/
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Given El Nino usually gives back to back storms in the heart of the season, December generally starts out dry but increases more and more as the month goes along. The spacing of storms now is very wide and this will continue through December.
There is a surface high west of Southern California and it is deflecting the storm pattern into Central and Northern California, also posts north into the Pacific Northwest. This has been the pattern all season long. It will not hold though. A surface high like this can be knocked down with colder water up-welling and for this to happen we have to have fronts knock the ridge down and rain to fall.
El Nino is now a 3.0, down from the peak of 3.1 last week. This is expected and we will continue to see the decline from now on. As stated in previous articles, the sweet spot in my research is 1.7 to 2.3 … anything higher has never been seen before and anything higher could ‘ruin’ the atmospheric pattern. To see this decline would be good news in my opinion.
Well see storms nudge us the first week of December, but after this each storm will start to drop further south. Our models are all over the place for the system in the 7-10 day period from now but one could hit us then. If not, the region would remain cooler than normal and the next series of storms would be between December 17-20, with another just before or on Christmas. This month will not have back to back storms each day and because I said slightly above average to above average does not mean back to back. It will only take one very powerful storm to breach that, but realistically two stronger storms could bring the rainfall above average for the month for the region, which seems more realistic given the pattern we are in.
One good thing is it looks like the resorts will have a White Christmas with snow on the ground this year …