DAYTON — Brewing right now in the Pacific is the strongest El Niño ever recorded, and it is likely to have a big influence on the weather across North America and the Miami Valley this winter.
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What is El Niño? El Niño is warmer-than-normal ocean water in the equatorial Pacific. This strip of warm water shifts the jet stream and other key atmospheric features.
Changing the location of these large-scale features changes how weather behaves across the US, especially during wintertime.
Historically, El Niño leads to warmer-than-average temperatures, near or below normal precipitation, and below-average snowfall across the Miami Valley.
The strength of the El Niño plays a role as well, but not in the way you may expect.
The relationship between El Niño and lack of snowfall isn’t direct. (Stronger doesn’t mean less snow, and weaker means more snow) Rather, over time, the stronger the El Niño is, the more likely it is that we see below-normal snowfall (less than 25” of snow in Dayton).
Considering how strong of a relationship El Niño has to below-normal snowfall in Dayton, we think history will repeat itself. We are calling for a mild winter with below-average snowfall and warmer-than-normal temperatures.
A few bigger winter storms remain possible; however, the winter will feature longer periods of mild weather.
There are some wildcards that could make this winter interesting. First, with this El Niño being the strongest ever recorded, will it behave differently?
There is no baseline to compare it to. Additionally, a different global teleconnection, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, is in the negative phase.
We could not find another time when a strong El Niño coincided with a strongly negative PDO. This provides an unknown variable that we must wait and see how it plays out.
Even though our forecast calls for less snow than normal, a few big winter storms are still likely. Those may be mixed in between periods of relatively mild weather.
But when winter weather strikes, our team will have you covered before, during, and after the storm with winter weather coverage you can count on.
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