It’s back.
El Nino has returned and weather forecasters feel it may soon be spinning its meteorological spells at a farm near you.
Warmer water temperatures in the southeastern Pacific have caused climatologists to begin predicting warmer, drier weather trends for the northwestern hemisphere next winter.
“There are no correlations between summer weather patterns for the Prairies and an El Nino, warming, occurrence. Winter, on the other hand … 18 out of 25 occurrences cause a warm winter for Alberta, slightly lesser for Saskatchewan and lesser yet for Manitoba,” said Brian Fehr, of Environment Canada.
The higher the temperature of the southern ocean, the greater the effect on weather on the Prairies from December through March. Temperatures of up to four degrees higher than average have been recorded recently in equatorial South America, making this warming event more dramatic than the one in 1994-95 or in 1992-93.
