El Niño In The Northland Part 1

Outlook For The Upcoming Winter

Winter is right around the corner here in the Northland and while we have gotten a small taste of it, it hasn’t gotten its full grasp around us yet.

This may be because of El Nino.

What exactly is El Nino and what impacts could it have this winter on our weather patterns?

FOX 21 Meteorologist Gino Recchia dives in with Part one of this special Series, El Nino in the Northland.

“What do you know about this winter? What are you expecting? Well so far it’s been pretty mild, but I was reading something yesterday that the Farmer’s Almanac is going to be a pretty tough winter,” says Vinod Gupta

“Last I heard, we are supposed to be having the El Nino, I believe it’s called, and it’s supposed to be fairly warm,” said Donald and Kathy Kronebusch.

“It’s going to be a really mild winter this year compared to the winters we have had really intense,” says Szhooniya Ogitchida

El Nino is nothing new to the meteorological world.

Every four to five years, it makes its return, impacting weather patterns all across the world.

But as we get closer to winter, many Northlanders are wondering what kind of winter we can expect this time around.

“This winter is probably going to be one that is much warmer than normal.

We are having a feature called El Nino,” said Meteorologist Mike Stewart.

El Nino is a large scale event where there are much warmer waters than normal off the South American Coast in the Pacific along the equator.

That affects weather patterns and allows warmer air to flow into the Northland.

But this El Nino is much stronger than usual.

“Scientists have shown that it looks like it’s going to be one of the strongest since the 97-98 winter. That winter here was the second warmest winter here since 1870,” says Meteorologist Mike Stewart.

With a strong El Nino taking shape, those hoping for lots of snow could be disappointed this winter.

“A lot of the precipitation is going to be falling later into the season in the form of rain rather than snow,” explained Professor Jay Austin.

And while a lot of focus is on the upcoming winter, El Nino’s impacts can last into the following spring and summer too.

“But come next summer if El Nino is persistent and all indications are that strong El Nino years persist, we could see increased drought and that would just exacerbate things,” says Professor John Pastor.

Duluth’s average annual snowfall is 86 inches.

Two and three years ago we had more than 100 inches of snow each year.

But last year we only had around 55 inches of snow.

So snowfall totals can vary quite a bit from year to year.

Because of El Nino, it’s likely the cold stretches we commonly see here in the Northland won’t be as common this year compared to some of our previous winters.

“Here they won’t last as long, and the cold will not be as intense, I like to joke that instead of -20 it will be -15,” described Meteorologist Mike Stewart.

And with a long range prediction, climate outlooks are different than weather forecasts.

“What weather is, what is the weather today, what’s the weather going to be this weekend? For climate, its more long range, what’s the weather going to be like this winter, what’s the weather going to be like next summer?” said Stewart.

With all this in mind, many of you at home are probably now asking, what are your predictions Gino?

Well this is what I think will happen this winter.

What has really influenced our winter weather the past several years was this blocking pattern over the Gulf of Alaska, which was a strong driving force for our cold weather.

This year, that pattern has dissipated so El Nino will be our focus.

The previous Strong El Nino’s have all caused shown above average temperatures as shown here in 1972-73, 1982-83, and most recently in the 1997-98 winter.

Snowfall is a bit of a different story when looking at the records, in El Nino years with the 1972-73 winter showing below average snowfall while the 82-83 and 97-98 winters ended up with above average snowfall totals.

With all this in mind, I think we will see above average temperatures roughly four degrees above normal, we will still see those cold blasts, but they won’t stick around long and we will see more frequent warm spells carrying the trend as we are already seeing above normal conditions this fall.

Snowfall will likely be quite a bit less, similar to what we saw last year with around 50 inches of snowfall.

And I believe overall precipitation will be below normal.

Because of that, I wouldn’t be surprised for parts of the Northland to head into a drought by the time spring arrives.