By Clint Thompson
The current weak La Niña weather pattern is forecast to be transitioning to neutral conditions during the Jan.-March timeframe. It should linger through the summer before giving way to an El Niño weather pattern.
Pam Knox, University of Georgia Extension agricultural climatologist, highlighted what that transition means for the Southeast with respect to potential tropical systems and next year’s winter weather.
“The signal is that we’re likely to swing into an El Niño fairly early. This is a tricky time of year, because there’s something called a Spring Predictability Barrier. It means that they don’t really have a strong signal one way or the other,” Knox said.
“Right now, the long-range forecast for Enso is for us to swing into an El Niño, and it looks like it could be a pretty strong one. It means next winter would likely be the opposite of this winter which would be cooler and wetter than usual. The jet stream parks right over the Southeast in an El Niño winter and we get more clouds; not necessarily we’re getting the really frigid temperatures but the daytime temperatures are not as warm because it’s cloudy.
“If that happens, the El Niño will likely keep the number of tropical storms down this year. Obviously, it depends on where they go and we don’t know that. It does mean that the Atlantic tropical season does tend to be a little less active. We ended up last year exactly on the long-term average. Almost all of those storms stayed away from the Southeast. It only takes one.
“We had Hurricane Andrew, which I think was 1992 in an El Niño summer. It caused tremendous damage where it hit. Just because we’re in an El Niño, it doesn’t mean we’re not going to see problems from a tropical storm because we don’t know where they’re going to go. It means the number is going to be lower, probably.”