El Niño & hurricanes.. (our "slow" season this year) (very interesting)

[SoCalDem]

There's a cool interactive graphic at the website.

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/translating-uncle-sam/stories/how-does-el-ni%C3%B1o-affect-hurricanes

How does El Niño affect hurricanes?

How does El Niño affect hurricanes?
The warmest global seawater on record is offering a feast for hurricanes this summer, but aside from Bill, the Atlantic Basin has been conspicuously quiet.

By Russell McLendon
Tue, Aug 25 2009 at 9:30 AM EST



The Atlantic hurricane season woke up early this year, fired off a weak tropical depression that didn't threaten land, and then hit snooze for two months. It made for an eerily quiet June and July — especially considering hurricanes run on warm seawater, and both months had the highest global sea-surface temperatures in 130 years of record-keeping.

But hot water alone doesn't cause hurricanes. Tropical wind, waves and weather must all cooperate to form the rotating thundercloud clusters that become monster cyclones. Even a slight variation could send a hurricane crashing into the ocean, and this year there's an extra twist: El Niño is sniping from the other side of Mexico, blowing the tops off many Atlantic tropical storms before they fully form.

"Upper-level winds from the west come across the Caribbean Sea, produce increased wind shear, and that's what hinders hurricane activity," says Gerry Bell, lead seasonal hurricane forecaster for the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center. "El Niño is so large, and the tropical Pacific is just right there across Mexico, so it's not a far distance, actually."

Along with quenching droughts in the Southwest and Southeast, hurricane control is one of El Niño's often-overlooked upsides — there's a good chance it broke up tropical storms Ana and Claudette earlier this month — but, as usual, it's mirrored by a downside somewhere else. El Niño favors Pacific cyclones while snuffing out Atlantic ones, and may have aided this month's deadly Typhoon Morakot, which killed hundreds of people in Southeast Asia.


snip

[Edweird]

1. I need a good hurricane to hit Florida. I need the work.

This was supposed to be an 'above average year'......

[Avalux]

2. 1998 and El Nino.

That year brought an unusually hot and dry summer to South Central Texas thanks to El Nino. October brought torrential rains and floods - what we called a 100 year flood - again, thanks to El Nino.

Now El Nino is back. So far this summer, we have experienced 56 days over 100 degrees and no significant rainfall since March. Same pattern as 1998 but more severe.

We are all wondering what's going to happen this fall. Floods aren't good but we desperately need the rain.

[FirstLight]

3. OH Noes! CA will certainly slide right into the Pacific!

I don't mean to sound like I am making light of this, either...

It makes for wet, wet and more WET here in CA and the west coast collectively...Here in the Sierras, the last El Nino years (97-98) were definately serious lake level raisers.
We had one set of storms around New Years, where it snowed, then torrential rained, clogged up all the gutters with ice and flooded an entire neighborhood, about 10+ blocks long...( of coure the area was all originally wetlands anyway, but there's houses there now!) I had never seen water like that in January in Tahoe!

The same set of storms touched off an epic mudslide over Hwy 50, a whole side of the mountain came down- blocking off the South Shore of Lake Tahoe from direct routes for trucks, etc for over 6 mos. They put 'sensors' in the mountains now to measure when the movement gets sloshy...but we haven't had a truly wet winter like that one since. I'm thinking "saturated" will be the word, it has already been a weird summer.

...if models are right, and past experience counts for anything I should just build my ark in the backyard now!
(what sucks is that I now live near that same neighborhood where I saw pics of people in rowboats years ago... oh shit)

[SoCalDem]

4. I HOPE we get a deluge.. We have a new roof (yay!)

and we certainly NEED the water :) Let it RAIN!!..pleeeeeease!