The Effects of "Super" El Ninos Are Surprisingly Different Than Some Suggest

It is now clear that a very strong or "super" El Niño will be in place this year.  

Some are even calling it a GODZILLA El Niño.

Several media outlets and amateur YouTube channels/social media sites suggest the impacts will be like a regular El Niño on steroids: very warm, wet, with a low snowpack.

For example, Oregon Public Radio:

The Bellington Herald throws caution to the wind, predicting drought and floods!  Plus fires. Devastating impacts for Whatcom County.  Meteorological "end times".

But there is pushback on these apocalyptic predictions.  

For example, the Summit at Snoqualmie folks looked at the snow statistics associated with very strong El Niño years and found snow totals near normal (link here)

And in my previous blog on very strong El Niños, I found the same thing: Northwest snowpack can be quite decent during "super" El Niño years.

So how can this be?   

Why do moderate El Niños cause one impact and "super" El Niños result in something different?   

Let's figure this out using real data.

The figure below shows precipitation associated with moderate, strong, and very strong ("super" or Godzilla) El Niño years for October through March.

The difference from normal is shown, with blue and purple indicating above-normal, and yellow and red indicating below-normal precipitation.  

Moderate and strong El Niño years are drier than normal over the Northwest, but "super" years, like this year, are WETTER than normal.

No drought expected.  Plenty of water for our region.

Surface air temperature?

Moderate and strong years are close to normal over the Northwest (below).  For "super" years like this one, temperatures are very modestly warmer (about 0.5 C or about 1F; see the blowup below). 

No wonder snowpacks remain decent for Super El Niño years:   only slightly warmer but with much more precipitation.

The Snoqualmie Pass folks were on to something!

Finally, can we explain these differences in a more fundamental way?  

To do so, below are upper-level weather charts (500 hPa heights; think of these as pressure around 18,000 ft)

All El Niño events are associated with an enhanced low-pressure system over the northeast Pacific (the purple colors).  Air circulates counterclockwise around lows.

For the moderate El Niños, the low is centered well offshore. Strong events have the low much closer to the coast, which is not favorable for precipitation over our region.  But for the "super" events, the low is more offshore, producing more moist southerly flow over our region.

Just right.

In summary, past events suggest that the Northwest impacts of a very strong El Niño are quite different from its moderate relatives.  

Importantly, Northwest drought conditions are not expected with a very strong El Niño, and there is good reason to hope for a near-normal snowpack.

Media and social media predictions of some kind of meteorological "end of times" are without support.

More Good News Regarding Northwest Wildfires

The wildfire season in the Pacific Northwest is rapidly approaching the endgame, with huge declines during the past month.

To illustrate the profound change, consider the satellite-based wildfire observations for today versus one month ago (below).

Today,  there are only a handful of hot spots on the northeast side of the Cascades.  No apparent fires in Oregon.

A month ago, it was a different story with numerous and massive fires (mainly the result of lightning) in both states.

Air quality is good through most of the region today, with some very localized degradation near some of the smoldering fires.

A sharp drought of low pressure will move through over the weekend, mainly to the south of Washington.  

As a result, southern Washington State and Oregon will see substantial precipitation (see totals through Monday morning below).   Bad for fires.

And temperatures should be cooler than normal from Friday to next Wednesday (see below), which should help suppress fires as well.

Pretty confident that this is the endgame for Washington/Oregon fires this year.

In a future blog, I will make the case that 2026 was predominantly a grass/range wildfire year in the Northwest.  The quote on AI source:

In Oregon—which surpassed historical records with over 2.3 million acres burned—short grass and dry brush served as the primary fuel source for roughly 1.8 million of those acres

And something else.  This is turning into a very attenuated wildfire year for California, with this year possessing less than half of the average over the past five years (see below).  That could change, of course.