The last time we had a significant discharge of heat from the tropical Pacific ocean from the depths into the atmosphere was in 2009/10.
The majority of that heat was sequestered back into the climate system due to conflicting processes in the extratropical Pacific and Atlantic. Every year since then, this bubble of warmth has moved across the Pacific from Indonesia to Peru where it surfaces briefly and gives up a bit of its heat before it is forced westward again under the surface by what have been persistent east winds (these are normal but they do fail every 3-7 years, triggering the heat dispersal from ocean to atmosphere.). They haven't failed. As long as this continues, California will wither.
But there were significant westerly wind bursts east of Papua New Guinea that have triggered the bubble of heat to move up and east.
This graph is the profile of water temp anomalies below the surface of the Pacific at the equator. The bubble is moving up and east.
That is as bad or worse than the one that triggered the 1997/98 super El Niņo. That super event occurred after only one failure to initiate in 1996. This one has been building since 2010.
If a super El Niņo forms expect major global weather changes. The most incredible impacts could be floods in the Atacama desert or the deserts of Peru. Drought in the Amazon. Floods in California and northern Mexico. Drought in Australia and southeast Asia. Flooding in the desert southwest of the US.
If this is the breaker, then CA will get all the rain they haven't had since 2011 at one time. CA is tied to the Pacific completely...and it didn't lose the ability to send rain to CA. It has sent it all to Alaska or Canada instead.
While CA withered in January...this was happening up in Ketchikan, AK (the most southerly city in AK)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oW8XnH9KHM8Here's my worry: This winter was very similar to 1976/77 and even worse as the core of it hit the coast instead of Buffalo. That was CA's worst drought up to this point. Then came 1977/78. Mammoth Mountain had a record low 90" of snow in 1977 and a record high over 500" in 1978. Then by 1983 they didn't know what to do with all the water.
Californians memories are as stunted as their ability to plan and adapt to the environment they choose to live in. And when the rain comes, it will be everyone elses fault just like the drought that preceded it.
If you build reservoirs to hold two years of water...what happens when you get nothing for 4 years and then all of it at once. The reservoirs dry up...and then overflow. And then 2 years later here we are again. But with even more people. And even more ice water shaming.
