What a strong El Niño means for Georgia's winter weather

Alex, we talked about the cold weather earlier. We're talking about something a little different, but it is definitely related, especially as we get deeper and deeper, I guess, get into winter and then deeper into it into next year with the super El Nino. So it's the new buzzword, right? It's the thing that everybody's talking about. Not just El Nino, super El Nino. Yeah, so it means it's really strong. And an update we got this week from the Climate Prediction Center is that those conditions have now been observed in the Pacific. So this is our El Nino. tracker here that plus 1.97 degrees celsius means you are you round it to two essentially which means the pacific is trending the equatorial pacific is trending two degrees celsius warmer than average now notice your forecast peak over there is point or 2.53 right so this is going to continue to get stronger and believe it or not yes the equatorial pacific has an impact on our weather so The Super El Nino, people make sound like an emergency, and it's not. There's no emergency headed our way. El Nino, it's a climate pattern, a periodic warming of the ocean in the tropical Pacific that nudges weather patterns around the globe for months at a time. So it doesn't cause any single one storm, but it does tilt the odds for other storms. And here in the southeast, the biggest change for us is going to be with what you call the subtropical jet. Think of this as the low pressure highway, if you will, that will be set up. Over the southeastern United States and the long-range computer models are in strong agreement on this pattern for the next three months Some are even showing record jet stream energy over the southern US so that puts us squarely in the active zone here across Georgia. So one thing you can take to the bank this winter, it is going to be a wetter than normal winter. NOAA's Climate Prediction Center calls a wet southeast one of the most reliable El Nino signs and its winter outlook does favor that as well. When we take a look here at the precipitation impact, what you're going to see is a lot of the counties, whenever you have a super El Nino recording wetter than average winters. Now When we get to the temperatures, that's when it is a little less certain, okay? So this is the county-by-county temperature map. They're a lot harder to pin down. El Nino reliably brings a mild winter to the northern plains and the upper Midwest. Down here, though, extra clouds and rainy days tend to hold temperatures near or slightly below normal. Think about it this way. A cloudy night. You only get down to 38, whereas if the skies were clear, you'd be able to get down to 32. So that's going to be the type of impact it has, particularly with the active storm track we're going to have. So let's talk about the winter weather chances, because this is what everybody wants to know. And I would put it this way, there will be more opportunities for winter weather this year than a normal year. The chance, though, for ice and snow and all that is more dependent on whatever daily pattern we see rather than the seasonal pattern. It does the polar jet dip down to the south. So the increase of moisture is going to provide that extra opportunity. More days with moisture means a higher chance of it overlapping with Arctic air. Now, one more thing I want to What I want to point out is this. Severe storms. This is going to be a thing. It gets overlooked, but I really want to highlight it. The same active jet stream that can bring rain can also fuel severe storms and tornadoes in winter. Historically, the number of days with significant tornadoes during winter doesn't change much, whether we're in El Nino, La Nina, or neither. But the Gulf Coast and north central Florida. Those numbers jump significantly. So you look at the map and you see us on the fringe. That is going to be something we'll keep an eye on. If the active pattern holds, you know, late January, February, March, Georgia will see its share of severe weather. The last time we had an El Nino this strong, which was 97, 98, that spring, Georgia had damaging tornadoes, including the Gainesville tornado and the Dunwoody tornado. So that's kind of a look into the future. If I had to put it succinctly, Tyler, I would say I'm going to be busy for the next five months. Yeah. If you're busy, that means people are busy. It means everyone's going to be needing to pay attention to and be weather aware to make sure that they are aware. I mean, severe weather is never something like we like to see. Hopefully, if we have a severe weather chance, hopefully it remains on a low level, like a level one. And it's not going to be something like tornadoes and things like that, because that can obviously do a lot of damage to families and homes and things like that. And that's obviously just unfortunate as people are. Just trying to deal with the weather. But I know that's unfortunately a possibility. And something I mentioned earlier, you know, we, I like to say we have two severe weather seasons, kind of the fall and the spring. What this is going to do is kind of merge that just into one. So before I worked here, I worked in Macon for three years and we had a decently strong El Nino, not to this level there, but it was. storm after storm after storm in December. So I think it's a great time to say download the Fox 5 Storm Team app. It's going to be a busy couple of months here. And it's not forecasting the El Nino anymore. It's here as of this past Thursday. And give us a follow on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook because we are going to be live streaming anytime there's severe weather, anytime you need to know something. The Fox 5 Storm Team, we have a huge team. They'll be with you every step of the way. We actually break into programming because it is It is required by FCC rules. When there's a tornado, so you are always going to be up to date. You guys do a fantastic job of making sure people in our community and even outside of our metro Atlanta area informed pretty much all of Georgia and even around the peripheral Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina and Alabama. Yeah. More to come on that. Stay tuned. That's what you call a tease. Alex, thanks so much.