ORLANDO, Fla. – From last winter up to now, you’ve probably at least ONCE stumbled upon the acronym ENSO.
What is it?
It stands for El Niño Southern Oscillation, which is one of the most prominent “teleconnections” on our globe in terms of helping us understand how the big picture weather pattern will behave.
A quick crash course in a teleconnection, as the name implies: one piece of weather phenomena impacts others in different parts of the world. Water temperatures, either hot or cold in the tropical Pacific, will influence the weather we feel here in Central Florida despite being hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away.
That’s where the term connection comes from. The atmosphere is connected like the engine under your car’s hood. You have your cylinder head, your engine block, the spark plugs, the ignition coils, the water pump, the belts (for my car enthusiasts out there). Each of these individual components work to power the motor.
Just like each individual phenomena we watch across Florida, near Florida or even far from Florida will all come full circle in creating our weather conditions.
So, back to ENSO!
All year long, we’ve been discussing neutral conditions in the Pacific. Neither warmer than average nor cooler. Basically, neither La Niña or El Niño. However, I’m here to tell you our forecast data is changing. It has been changing since we left what’s called the “Spring Predictability Barrier.” Another shortened weather lesson for you - essentially a predictability barrier implies it’s far more difficult to forecast for “this” (in our current case, water temperatures) because of this.
For the El Niño or La Niña conditions, during the winter into early spring we run into this issue. This all lies in the Earth’s natural tilt, its orbit around the sun, the changing seasons and how the northern hemisphere winter into spring behaves when it comes to wind patterns that then affect how water temperatures are laid out.
Now that we’re well into summer, and we can clearly focus in on what our winds are doing to influence our temperatures, we’re trending away from holding on to neutral conditions, or even a slow warming process, back to cooling.
In fact, where we stand as of this article, computer models and Climate Prediction Center forecasters are leaning more toward a return to La Niña conditions as we rock into the fall and winter season.
Remember what happened at the end of September? Major Hurricane Helene, almost effectively opened the flood gates for tropical activity. We went from Helene down to Milton in the span of approximately seven to 10 days. We then followed Milton up with Nadine, Oscar, Rafael, and Sara to round out the hurricane season of 2024.
We’re not quite anticipating as busy of a latter half as last year, given some of the other ingredients we typically monitor.
We’ll continue to see if things come into better alignment for a more favorable Atlantic basin. But La Niña, if it does come to be, will definitely be a little nudge in the positive direction for tropical development. This is especially true as we get just beyond the peak of the season, Sept. 10, toward October.
Couple this with the warming we’ve observed in the tropics from the coast of Africa through to the Caribbean. We’re currently seeing warming where it matters most, and forecasting additional cooling where it matters for the hurricane season.
This will be an interesting progression to watch as to takes place over the next several weeks. I do think we should anticipate busier periods of tropical action coming very soon, maybe even within the next week or two.