Los Angeles is in for another hot winter, with little chance for relief from drought conditions that now exist throughout California, according to a new forecast from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
That’s in spite of a probable El Niño event, which could bring above-average rainfall to the southwestern United States. The NOAA estimates that there’s a 70 to 75 percent chance that an El Niño develops in late fall or early winter, but it’s likely to be a weak El Niño, meaning that it’s less likely to bring higher than average rainfall to Southern California.
Two winters ago, even a strong El Niño, which many meteorologists predicted would cause torrential downpours and flooding in Southern California, failed to bring even above-average rainfall to the region.
“California’s tricky,” Mike Halpert, deputy director of NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, told reporters Thursday. “Even [in 2016] when folks thought the stronger El Nino would tip the odds pretty strongly towards wet, that didn’t really pan out.”
This year NOAA climatologists are hedging their bets, predicting neither a wetter-than-average nor a drier-than-average winter for most of California.
Halpert says the agency is more confident that temperatures will be hotter than normal. In fact, warmer temperatures are in the forecast for every state west of the Mississippi.
According to a temperature outlook from the National Weather Service, there’s a 76 percent chance that temperatures near Downtown LA will be near or above average this winter, and only a 24 percent chance that they will be below average.
Warmer weather certainly won’t ease drought conditions in the region. California relies on snow from the Sierra Nevada mountain range for much of its water supply, and if temperatures aren’t cold enough, some of the precipitation the mountains do get this winter could fall as rain.
Thanks to a wet 2017, current drought conditions aren’t nearly as bleak as they were two years ago, but a dry winter could exacerbate the issue considerably.
Halpert says that a key factor in the wetness or dryness of California’s winter will be the number of atmospheric rivers, or streams of water vapor, that develop above the state during the season.
“Six to eight is kind of the ‘holy grail,’ says Halpert. “At this point we don’t really have the ability to predict those.”
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Comments
In a climate changed world, it’s hard to predict anything anymore.
By ImpatientMike! on 10.19.18 11:50am
Droughts in So. Cal. have happened for Millennia. Like that drought in 850 A.D. that lasted 240 years. Clearly the result of anthropologic climate change.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/01/25/california-drought-past-dry-periods-have-lasted-more-than-200-years-scientists-say/
By LADude on 10.19.18 12:24pm
https://xkcd.com/1732/
Scroll all the way down for the surprise ending.
By disqusted on 10.19.18 2:45pm
Good mic drop!
By ImpatientMike! on 10.19.18 4:20pm
Based on this cartoon earth was as warm from 8,000 BC to 3,000 BC as it was during the last decade. And the drastic increase is based on projections as to what might occur. And it starts from 20,000 bc conveniently ignoring the last several ice ages. Only an idiot would base their assumptions on 20,000 years of data for a planet that is 4.5 billion years old. Mike drop!
By LADude on 10.19.18 4:42pm
Hey ConcernedCitizen1950, what exactly is your point? What should my takeaway be from your impassioned and entertaining rants here? If my thoughts and conclusions about the veracity of anthropogenic global warming pushing rapid, uncontrolled, and unpredictable climate change on our planet are wrong, what, in your educated opinion, should be my thoughts and conclusions on such matters? please help me (and us?) out.
Thanks.
Oh, and BTW, would you like me to offer a retort to your "argument" about the significance of warming from 8,000 to 3,000 BC as compared to the present day? You can say "no".
By ImpatientMike! on 10.19.18 8:11pm
The past ice ages have essentially nothing to do with the present day warming trend, they’re more related to other things like changes in the Earth’s orbit. MIKE DROP
The past 5 years have been the hottest in the history of civilization, and yes, that includes the time span you listed. And it’s going to get hotter still. MIKE DROP?
By JohnnyBlades on 10.22.18 10:40am
Yes, and it took about 2,000 years for that previous warming cycle to occur. Our current warming has happened in about 100 years.
By TheMarketSoftener on 10.22.18 1:52pm
Thank you for the contrarian’s response to science. It actually helps me understand your perspective.
The cartoon wasn’t about temperature as much as it was about rates of change.
By CaliSon on 10.26.18 2:56pm
I’m glad that you agree that the climate has changed and past climate models may be compromised as to their efficacy in predicting 3 month, 6 month, and 1 year climate in Cali.
Place your bet, ConcernedCitizen1950! Over/Under: 10 inches of precipitation at the DTLA rain gage for the 2018-2019 season? What say you? >; )
By ImpatientMike! on 10.19.18 4:27pm
What the f are you talking about? SoCal has been drought prone before humans added any carbon gases to the atmosphere and the droughts have nothing to do with the assumption of anthropologic climate change. The amount of rain that will fall during a single winter is irrelevant.
By LADude on 10.19.18 4:46pm
Are you retarded? you really believe all the smog that comes out of the millions of cars, factories and waste that is produced by humans has "no effect". Despite, the majority of the scientific community, who I bet is much much smarter than you, agree that it is. Damn, youre ignorant.
By Tito Surek on 10.19.18 4:54pm
"No effect" is an absolute, so only a dummy would challenge that. But what is the effect? Maybe thru some Darwin-like action, it helped. Or maybe we’ll die tomorrow. Who knows? But I can tell you a historically drought-prone region will likely suffer from drought in any given year.
There’s a lot of pearl-clutching around here over an issue we can’t control unless the entire world suddenly and completely devolves to pre-industrial revolution times. And even then the climate will still change.
By Cream Of Toast on 10.19.18 7:15pm
Plenty of major industrialized countries have zero-carbon goals and are reaching them rapidly. Thinking that drastically reducing carbon output will mean we go back to pre-industrial times shows a lack of imagination.
By Greyvagabond on 10.22.18 9:35am
OK, so….then under 10 in.? Yeah?
By ImpatientMike! on 10.19.18 5:28pm
For the record, my original post here offered a bit of a rebuttal (of sorts) to the SoCal rainfall predictions that the article referenced. Since the World now lives in a regime of relatively rapid and unpredictable climate flux where regional climates are changing in ways that elude reliable predictions, it’s hard to say what the rainfall will likely be in SoCal (or anywhere for that matter).
By ImpatientMike! on 10.19.18 5:37pm
There is no drought. The NORMAL weather cycle in California is a relatively wet year followed by 2 to 3 relatively dry years. Occasionally there are two wet years in a row. Occasionally the wet year gets skipped. 3 wet years in a row is abnormal. More than 5 dry years in a row is abnormal. We are not experiencing either condition. State reservoirs are at 104% of normal even after dumping over a million acre-feet due to the bungled maintenance of Oroville. Include that, and you’d be at 111%. Drought is a condition in California used by climatologists to denote that an area has received below average precipitation during a relatively short time period. The yearly average(among other factors) they based this on is established over a period of 150 some years. However, average years almost NEVER occur. See explanation above. Comparing the natural state of affairs to the average will almost invariably yield 2-3 "drought" years every 4 years. This designation is fairly meaningless as average yearly precipitation is a meaningless statistic in regard to state climate.
Also, NOAA’s mid-range forecasts are completely unreliable, and you may as well ignore them. I pay close attention to NWS forecasts because I work outside and need to know when it’s going to rain. Their forecasts are generally unreliable(even within a time frame of 48 hours), and it is clear that major pieces of their models are flawed when it comes to southern California. The San Diego office in particular is great at being dead wrong on a regular basis.
By iONu on 10.19.18 11:43pm
Thanks for destroying our climate, China
By Renter's Rage on 10.20.18 6:58am
The United States of America (<5% of the world) is responsible for more than a quarter of the total climate pollution in the industrial age. Chyyyna, even with all its people and all its problems, doesn’t come close.
Back to the drawing board with your climate troll’n, rage-r
By JohnnyBlades on 10.22.18 10:35am
Really? Are you measuring the tons or crap that China spews in the air completely unregulated or unmeasured, unlike the USA?
By Renter's Rage on 10.22.18 9:56pm
yah, rage-r, it’s been measured.
which country do you think industrialized first, or pollutes more per-person (it’s the USA)
we oughta nut up and pay for it
By JohnnyBlades on 10.23.18 12:31pm
China has certainly created an ecological disaster for itself in terms of fossil fuel air pollution which came into being during their phase of rapid economic develop (from the 1980’s through the 2000’s). But, to their credit, they are aggressively tackling that problem with enormous investment in renewable power.
China is now by far the number one CO2 polluter in the world (almost twice the emissions of former, long time CO2 emissions champ, U.S.A.). As for per-capita CO2 emissions, the U.S.A. is much higher than China but only because China has about four times the population of the U.S. Many countries in the Middle East have much higher per-capita CO2 emissions than the U.S.
By ImpatientMike! on 10.23.18 2:19pm
Im sure another warm and dry winter will help convince our junkie criminal tent dwellers to voluntarily put down the needle and 4 loco and live in a tent with 100 other people where they cant drink, get high, sleep all day etc.
By pwm34 on 10.21.18 9:48am
Just a basic study of the Region’s climate will lead you to undebatable facts. Also look at what plants and trees are growing here everything is extremely well suitable for the ebb and flow of drought periods. This did not happen overnight nor did it happen all of a sudden after the Industrial Revolution. The same trees plants have been here since the end of the last ice age. Some like to argue the droughts are more numerous and severe something they picked up probably watching an agenda driven media source. There is no argument it’s an undebatable fact that there has been more numerous and way more severe droughts (100 years +) in this Region’s past pre- Industrial Revolution. Yes I believe we are polluting the planet but to say that man is changing or has changed the cycle of drought in Southern California is idiocy.
By Woodsmen on 10.21.18 10:19am
To say that man is not changing things would be idiocy.
By JohnnyBlades on 10.22.18 10:48am