Summer 2015 Weather Outlook

[Ban my account ffs!]

Usually summers with strengthening el niños are cool for large sections of the nation and wet for most of the nation as well...

But that doesn't preclude some outlier hot years.  The only cases we have where an El Niño formed and then lasted into a second year was 1940, 1952, 1958, 1969, 1977, and 1987.  None of these fit what's going on now very well with perhaps the exception of 1940.

It appears the el niño forming right now may be quite strong.  Summers where strong El Niños formed were 1957, 1965, 1972, 1982, 1991, 1997, and 2009.  These were generally cool and wet summers for the nation as a whole.

So we shall see if Accuweather has it right or if past events still hold some predictive power.

[Ban my account ffs!]

It failed to materialize last winter, but it just guaranteed it for this year.  The last significant El Niño to occur was in 2009/10 so it has been a full 5 years since the end of a significant one.  We had La Niña in 2010/11 and 2011/12 with neutral conditions the past three years.  The last time it was this long without an El Niño was 1942-1951.

The global sea surface temperature anomalies are quite similar to this point in 1997.  Convection and thunderstorms have been continually suppressed over the Indian ocean and west Pacific and enhanced in the central and east Pacific near South, Central, and southern North America.

Increased upper level west to east winds are working hard to sheer the tops off any thunderstorms in the Caribbean and western Atlantic, suppressing any tropical storm development there.

Going into late summer and fall, look for below normal tropical activity in the Atlantic and possibly western Pacific with increased activity for the eastern Pacific.  This is mostly an issue for Mexico...but with so much warm water, storms will survive further north and their remnants could deliver more unusual desert thunderstorms, like Delores did the past few days.

A strong El Niño will likely mean ending the California drought so that by January we will all be fretting over overfilled reservoirs and mudslides.  And scare dtories of massive fires when the verdant green predictably dries out in the ever dry California summer next year.

[Ban my account ffs!]

I really don't like rough wind, and I'll probably need to buy something to jam the flow of it. One might even say I'm looking for a windjammer.

I hear the north of France manufactures the best windjammers.

[Ban my account ffs!]

I'd give Accuweather a C.  They got the west largely correct and some hit and miss in the east.  But they did poorly as the summer has been cool in the midwest and northeast and much of the nation has been drier than normal except the corn belt and the SW quadrant of the nation.  Basically the central midwest and deserts got rain and everyone else has seen spotty rain.

The lower Mississippi valley and low country of the Carolinas have been especially dry.

Interestingly it has been an unusually, if not historically, wet summer for California.  Thunderstorms from Pacific moisture have been spotty but have contributed to beneficial and very unusual summer rainfall in places that usually almost never see summer rains.

But because the "norm" is near 0 rain, even spotty storms that leave most areas high and dry contribute to historical "wetness".

The rains have been more substantial and beneficial in Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado.  The drought has been busted in New Mexico and places like Santa Fe have seen day after day of storms... like a real monsoon.