El Niño likely coming, but will it make a difference?

Jul 20, 2015 at 12:00am

Phillip Reese, Sacramento Bee

The El Niño weather pattern often brings deluges to California, quickly dropping inches of rain in what climatologists liken to turning on a fire hose.

Except when it doesn’t. Except when it brings no extra rain.

 
El Niño is a hot topic today among water agency managers, farmers and others sick of California’s historic drought. Earlier this month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced El Niño is strengthening, that it will almost certainly continue through next winter in the Northern Hemisphere, and that it will probably last into early spring 2016.

So which El Niño will show up? Will it be the El Niño of 1982-83 that doubled rainfall in Northern California? Or the El Niño in 1976-77 that corresponded with one of the worst droughts in recent memory? Will we see another strong El Niño like the one that hit in 1997-98, dropping about 32 inches of rain on Sacramento? Or will it be the strong El Niño of 1987-88, which brought just 15 inches of rain.


Read more here