El Nino

[KRSESQ]

El Nino winter coming up. Hooray.

Straight from NOAA.

Kevin

[Brian Ellis]

I'm surprised it took USA Today this length of time to talk about El Niño. It's effects have been known for a couple of months.

Scientists said El Niños disrupt storm formation because it allows wind shear to rip apart thunderstorms in the center of the hurricanes, reducing power and intensity as a result.

This is putting the cart before the horse. The wind shear does not reduce hurricane power/intensity; it prevents them from forming. If you have a category I or higher, in fact just a tropical storm in most cases, the energy contained in the system is so high that wind shear wouldn't even look at it. OTOH wind shear, combined with high wind-formed wave activity is a sure way of preventing a depression developing into a storm and thence into a hurricane/typhoon/whatever-you-like-to-call-it.

You can see from the map why the Pacific typhoon season has been worse-than average this year. What I find disquieting is that the Labrador current looks warmer than it should be and, above all, Hudson's Bay.

[Greebe]

Windshear most definitely can kill lower class Hurricanes and obliterate Tropical depressions.

High altitude windshear may not wipe out higher class Hurricanes, but it does weaken them immensely

Having lived through many tropical depressions, cat 1, 2, 3, 4 hurricanes I can personally attest what the effect of shear can do to them and they're seen as a saving grace in most cases.

The minor La Nina we experienced this last winter left us in an extreme drought condition where most areas here didn't see any precipitation in 5 months. Fire dangers were classed as high extreme and most west central counties were red flaged no burn zones.

Now if we can just do something about the Red Tide (algae bloom aka HAB's) condition we're currently experiencing