El Nino Conditions Mean Possibly Warmer Winter
FARGO, N.D. (KVRR) — Temperatures in the F-M area remain above average–and the nice weather has not gone unnoticed. So far, just a few flurries have occurred in central North Dakota. Rainfall is below average as well.
“Obviously I’m very excited. Unfortunately, my motorcycle is down for the count so I’d love to be out riding right now.”, said local resident Greg Brandt. The local residents in Fargo are definitely enjoying this warmer October weather.
But this brings the question Why is it warmer, and more important, Will this trend stay for the winter? Director of the North Dakota Agricultural Weather Network Daryl Ritchison says “Oftentimes when there’s an El Niño we tend especially once we get past the middle of the month we’ll trend a little colder that just really hasn’t happened this year.” regarding the currently warm October temperatures. He also states, “I think it will start to happen next week to finish off the month. So far the cold air has not been able to funnel down from the arctic.” Daryl expects colder temperatures to end the month.
El Niño, also known as the El Niño southern oscillation is a slight change in the climate in the South Pacific, leading to warmer sea surface temperatures than normal. This sea surface temperature change has a lot of impacts across North America, but the important one for the area is the impact on the winters. El Nino’s lead to the northern great plains regions having warmer and dryer winters than average and cooler, wetter winters for the southern parts of the United States. El Niño has a counterpart as well, La Nina, where the opposite occurs in the south pacific leading to cooler and wetter winters in the northern great plains.
But what about the winter, Daryl also stated, “So I think the odds are quite high that this winter will be much different than the winters from the past 2 years and most people’s memory is one year so even average let alone a little bit above will feel a lot better than what we experienced a year ago.” He also mentioned that multiple factors besides the El Nino impacting our winter, but does expect El Niño to help us to an average or slightly above average winter.
