Latest Forecast Suggests ‘Godzilla El Niño’ May Be Coming to California
Right about the time we might be installing deeper wells, our first urban cisterns, gray water, even lower than lowe before than lower flow toilets, shower heads and faucets, we may be frantically sandbagging. Why? Too much too fast hurts us. Sure surface reservoirs will fill, but in part with mud and trees. Maybe cabins and homes. The water that runs off does not get into our groundwater. It just feeds a river to the sea.
The strengthening El Niño in the Pacific Ocean has the potential to become one of the most powerful on record, as warming ocean waters surge toward the Americas, setting up a pattern that could bring once-in-a-generation storms this winter to drought-parched California.
The National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center said Thursday that all computer models are now predicting a strong El Niño to peak in the late fall or early winter. A host of observations have led scientists to conclude that “collectively, these atmospheric and oceanic features reflect a significant and strengthening El Niño.”
Read all about the California drought >>
“This definitely has the potential of being the Godzilla El Niño,” said Bill Patzert, a climatologist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge.
More: Latest Forecast Suggests ‘Godzilla El Niño’ May Be Coming to California