
Super El Niño, Separating Fact from Hyperbole
Weather can make or break a crop, and this winter is one to watch, with a likely super El Niño taking shape. “We're very confident that this event will be extremely strong,” said Nat Johnson with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who is among the team tracking its progress. “It's already very strong. So we're very confident in how the El Niño will evolve in the tropical Pacific. And then now the question is how confident should we be in the expected impacts of El Niño over places like the US and throughout the world? And that's a little bit trickier because there are other factors that always influence our weather and climate places like North America.” Another closely following this climate pattern is Rob Doornbos, a grower and head of Weather Tools in Chico, California. “It's totally unfounded to sit here and say, we got a Super El Niño batten down the hatches, we're all going to flood away,” he said. “We could have a very damaging year that's entirely possible and our data collection will complete here by the end of October and we will run our model and we will see what it says.” Doornbos studied the last four super El Niños in California. The first two were exceptionally wet with a lot of flooding. The last two were average to slightly dry precipitation.










