ORLANDO, Fla. – As predicted, La Niña came to fruition at the tail-end of September, with cooler than average water temperature anomalies spreading out across each of its individual “regions” through the tropical Pacific Ocean.
Each of these individual regions are designated as a way for climate scientists and meteorologists alike to monitor the influence the water temperatures have on our weather patterns not only for locations that shore a coast with the Pacific but across the globe.
It can do some pretty wild things to the way weather behaves, even here in Central Florida.
From where we stand now, despite being quite a ways away, it seems more likely than not a developing El Niño could be on the table for spring, summer and hurricane season next year.
Before we go any further, I do want to caveat by saying this will be a pretty extended-range outlook. I want to set us up for success looking down the pike, especially since each upcoming season could look very different when water temperatures flip over in the Pacific Ocean.
If you’d like to come with me down this abbreviated rabbit hole, let’s do it!
A quick crash course for those familiar with the terms La Niña and El Niño. La Niña is characterized by cooler than average water temperatures through the stretch of ENSO regions we’ve tagged in the equatorial Pacific.
El Niño would be the opposite — warmer than average. They influence a global circulation of air called the Walker Circulation. This influences where we see a bulk of our rising or sinking motions across the continents of the world.
As La Niña persists into January and February, there’s a lot of warmer than average water piling up in the Indian Ocean, near the Maritime continents of Asia and Australia, and it has to go somewhere.
Through time, computer models suggest we’ll start to see bursts of strong westerly wind, driving these warmer waters into the central and eventually eastern Pacific. This could be enough to induce El Niño conditions after a period of neutral ENSO like we saw this year.
Now let’s dial in to Florida’s weather and we’ll use this upcoming winter as an example. Traditionally speaking during La Niña conditions, Florida will remain mostly dry and clear throughout a winter season. This is what we call our “dry season,” for us native Floridians.
We will see some quick snaps of very cold air, like what we’re expecting to arrive for our Veterans Day next Tuesday. But it won’t last. We usually stay more mild and dry with the bulk of the rains and severe weather occurring north of us.
El Niño flips this entirely upside down. For those of you who’ve resided in Florida for more than a few years now, recall back to the winter time of 2023 into 2024. Remember back in October and through the months of December, January and February all the tornado outbreaks northern Florida endured?
El Niño helps to yank our jet stream further south, with a cranking secondary jet from the lower latitudes called the Subtropical Jet that then go on to provide us with a lot more rainfall, longer duration cool snaps, and a ton of potential severe weather risks.
From a cool and clear winter, to a nasty set up for tornado watches, flooding, and gusty winds.
It also has implications on the future hurricane season (unless you’re 2023 and don’t want to play by the rules). The same jet stream phenomena that encourages severe weather over Florida tends to keep the Gulf and the Caribbean void of any tropical action because of all the excessive wind shear.
Normally, when an El Niño is forecast to come together, a hurricane season is predicted to be average if not BELOW average. So no, the pre-seasonal forecasts aren’t always calling for doom, gloom and 30 named storms. I promise you that!
I do mention 2023 specifically though, because despite the strong El Niño having surfaced, we still went on to have the fourth most active hurricane season in recorded history.
One small little note as well, even though now we’re REALLY REACHING - the staple rhythm suggests once we come out of La Niña, back into El Niño and then El Niño fades - be prepared for a pretty intense hurricane season shortly thereafter.