El Nino Officially Declared

[Ino]

It's official El Nino is here;
http://tinyurl.com/pl52zuh

This El Nino is very late and weak and should have little effect on the sensible weather for most of the globe except expect to feel it here;
http://tinyurl.com/kar27z2

If you want to better understand the phenomenon, this is a good place to start;
http://tinyurl.com/o4f66y

Technical info here;
http://tinyurl.com/kw28v

Impacts on Hawaii is blank now but should be there soon. Impacts by state;
http://tinyurl.com/6st64zv

Just plain temperature and precipitation forecasts for Hawaii;
http://tinyurl.com/npjpc59


If you don't want to read all the mumbo jumbo about El Nino this is one of the best sites to just keep updated on the effects here is;
http://tinyurl.com/cxyfbg3

Some easy generalizations are, increased tropical and hurricanes in the Central Pacific Basin peaking in Aug/Sept. Warm Sea Surface Temperatures are reflected in the atmosphere directly above them, so expect it to be warmer and more humid as long as SST stay above normal.

Of course I could go on and on but I'll spare you unless of course you want more and I'd be happy to oblige!

[TomK]

Thank you, Ino. We've been hovering around the border of El Nino for quite a while here and have been wondering when we'd actually cross it. I'm curious to see what conditions are expected for Hawaii, because even if the event is a weak one we're certainly experiencing some unusual weather at the summit. Not so much snowfall, but the length of the storms and high wind events are unusually long.

Can't tell for sure if they are tied in with El Nino of course, might just be random weather.

[Kenney]

Thanks for the info. It's kind of funny that our resident brainy Puna Webbers were ahead of the Tribune Herald in making it official. It's the headline of today's paper.

[Ino]

TomK had an excellent comment "Can't tell for sure if they are tied in with El Nino of course, might just be random weather."

Sorry but this is long and lots of Mumbo Jumbo (weather will do that to you)

Most large scale weather systems don't seem to be random to me and seem to be very much cause and effect. For instance, this winter we had a long period of warm (dry) air as we were in the Northern edge of a warm air bubble from a warm air mass during that long dry spell- Hilo's 23 days of no measured precipitation was the longest dry spell since 1943. 72 years that's a long time for a weather record.

I don't think that large scale weather is very random but I do believe in the Butterfly effect;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect

Now we are in the edge of the cold air bubble which has finally won out (took over) and because of it's weight and pressure gradients (cold air weighs much more than warm air) is moving South. Most of the warm air bubble has been modified. but where it still is it's windy. Most years the fronts go back and forth, warm air north, cool air south and winds rise and fall. For most of this winter we stayed in the edge between the air masses most of the time. At lower elevations on the Big Island most of the time during our winter the air mass differences were not so much and the winds were light much of the time. It's been on top of Hawaii's mountains that where the air mass wars have been.

Weather does not operate in a vacuum. If air is moving South then air is moving North and the same amounts eventually. This year the strong warm air bubble fended off most but not all cold front passage, the ones that did get thru gave us those very intense wind storms. That's because you had wedges of very cold air sliced into some very warm air and that's where the winds really ramp up.

This winter a very unusual (extent and duration) large pool of cold air overtook the Central North Pacific and finally cooled off the warm water plume that came from Japan's March 2011 tsunami and cooled it off dramatically, so much so that warm air masses moving North were quickly modified and dissipated. One way to see this clearly is to look at these 2 charts and you can see how close to each other these air masses are now in March 2015. Sea Surface Temperatures (SST)determine the surface air masses.
Look at sst for Aug 2014;
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomal...8.2014.gif
and now March 2015;
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomal...5.2015.gif

Basically, the closer you are to the edge of air masses and the more differences between the air masses, the higher the wind will be. So we have been on the edge between the air masses almost the whole winter. For now the cold air has won and until that changes we will be cool, cloudy and damp here.

Hopefully this cold water lasts as although hurricanes don't come from the North, they are attracted to warm water and warm air rising. Last year the water was the warmest I have ever seen it in the North Central Pacific and undoubtedly in my mind anyway a leading reason why our hurricane season was so active.

[TomK]

No need to apologize, Ino, I found your post very interesting. I'll probably have one or two questions for you, but after a few weeks of rather intense stuff at work I'm taking a break from thinking this weekend!

Thanks again.

[dmbwest]

Beer coming out my nose here Tom ... Was gonna 'speak' to you about you recent postings. Sorry man, but you NEED a break. Nuf said ...
Most sincerely,
your friend,
pog

[ElysianWort]

Last El Nino that was really significant was 1999 I think. I believe the drought was much longer than the one we just had and it was the only year I've ever seen mangoes on my trees up here in Hawaiian Acres.

[Kiana]

Thanks, Ino. Great info and links, love studying the weather which impacts us so much on our island(s). Last season was very active with so many storms forming (22 ?), Iselle arriving, and a near miss by Julio. I look forward to hearing more from our local weather scientist friends as the year unfolds. Hopefully, storms without landfall!

[lavalava]

Well good thing all those Albezia blew down last year and we are all safe!