Suffering through the third year of an oppressive drought, California received good and bad news Thursday from scientists closely tracking the Pacific Ocean for El Niño, the phenomenon when ocean waters warm, often bringing wet winters to California.
The chances of El Niño conditions developing by this fall are now 82 percent, up from 78 percent last month — and 36 percent since November — the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced.
But for the first time, NOAA scientists said, it looks like a moderate — rather than a strong — El Niño is developing. And historically, while strong El Niños have nearly always brought soaking rains to California, moderate and weak ones only about half the time have delivered wetter-than-normal winters.”The question now is what flavor of El Niño we’re going to get,” said Bill Patzert, a research scientist and oceanographer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. “I’ve got my money on this being El Wimpo.”