El Nino and Michigan: Winter outlook looks warm

A background first.

An El Nino is warmer-than-normal sea water in the Pacific.

La Nina is cooler than normal Pacific sea surface water.

In an El Nino the warmer waters flow towards the east, in other words towards the United States west coast.

The opposite happens in an La Nina.

IT IS NOT A STORM. This misconception seems to have been made recently so lets clear that up now.

It is simply a variable of the earth's climate, not some gigantic demon (or Godzilla as some national media outlets have described it) coming to ravage the country.

It's warm water, pure and simple, but it DOES have an effect on the country and on us here in Michigan.

Why? Simple, Jet stream.

The Jet moves around north and south and fluctuates from season to season.

It can also fluctuate day to day and these fluctuations are what help systems track our way and help to fuel us with moist, warm, or cold air.

The warmer waters in the Pacific change the way the Jet behaves and increase its temperature which then moves over the Jet like a conveyor belt.

It can change some seasonal things so lets dive right in and see what could happen.

EL NINO'S EFFECT:

In strong El Nino years the weather is characterized by increased moisture in some areas and warmer than normal temperatures.

It is no secret that the weather and atmospheric circulations depend a lot on the ocean temperatures and circulations.

So if you take a system moving over warm Pacific waters, it is pretty certain it will be on the warmer side of things.

Plus, warm moist air rises so now you add a lot of moisture to the air that has to come down somewhere.

That somewhere first is California.

I expect there to be a lot of rain coming to the west coast and that is both very good, and terribly bad.

A lot of rain at once can cause massive mud slides which has happened in a past El Nino year I will talk about in a second.

BUT, it will do a lot to replenish their reservoirs and add water to the mountains there in the form of snow.

They need water, badly, so our best hope is the added moisture comes in a gentle wave instead of a deluge all at once.

FOR MICHIGAN: A strong El Nino year means warmer winter on average and more just plain wet conditions and less snow.

So depending on who you are you'll either be far more excited for less shoveling and extra heat, or be the other end of the spectrum and wish you could be sledding.

PAST STRONG YEARS-EXAMPLES COMPARED TO CURRENT STRENGTH AND TREND:

There are 2 big years to focus on as potential benchmarks: winter 1982-83 and winter 1997-98.

Our average snowfall for a winter season is around the 44 to 45 inch mark, give or take a couple tenths of an inch of snow.

In 1982-83 we got only 26.5" of snow, and in 97-98 we got only 28.3" of snow.

PLUS, in 1982 we were in the 60's for Christmas!

In 1997-98 we had one of the warmest January's on record here with Detroit seeing days in the 60's.

HOWEVER, winter and seasonal outlooks in general are awfully difficult to come up with accurately. Look at last winter where the original outlook was for a warmer than average winter and we froze.......again.

But El Nino gives a huge confidence boost as meteorologists because the actual, tangible data is there. You can see it, feel it, measure it.

We base the measure for the winter off of a guess the trend will continue but it sure doesn't look like it's stopping.

Before anyone says to me months from now while standing in half a foot of snow "You said it was going to be warm!" you have to remember, it is still winter.

Michigan will still see snow, and the season total may be made of 1 or 2 larger storms and a couple small bursts.

But the overall season would be much warmer with more warm days, less overall snow, and a lot of sunshine.

Florida Freeze

Record Cold Across Great Lakes and Eastern U.S. Great Lakes Could Set Ice Record

As much of the eastern U.S. freezes in a bitter February cold snap, so too do the Great Lakes, which are now more than 85 percent covered in ice. With outlooks pointing to continued cold through the month, the potential grows for the Great Lakes to see one of the iciest years on record.

With a total ice cover of 85.4 percent, the lakes have now surpassed where they were at this time last year. After a brutally cold winter across the eastern U.S. in 2014, the Great Lakes went on to set the second-highest ice cover on record — 91 percent — since monitoring began in the 1970s. Ice lingered in Lake Superior through Memorial Day last year — and it was even more surprising that it was still there as record highs were being broken in the Midwest. The record-highest ice extent occurred Feb. 19, 1979, when 94.7 percent of the network was covered in ice.

With 82.6 percent coverage, Lake Ontario seems primed to meet or exceed its record ice extent: 85.7 percent, set in 1979. Lake Erie is a popsicle with more than 98 percent of the lake covered in ice. As the shallowest lake in the network, it has reached full ice coverage three times on record, in 1978, 1979 and 1996. Erie’s ice cover sky-rocketed in January, climbing from ice-free to 88 percent coverage in just a couple of weeks.

While it’s difficult to know for sure whether the Great Lakes will reach record ice cover this year, it’s certainly not out of the realm of possibility given the outlook for below-normal temperatures in the next few weeks.

On Wednesday, NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center was forecasting a high chance of below-average temperatures toward the end of the month across a huge portion of the eastern United States. The center is also suggesting that the chill could last through March over the Great Lakes and Northeast, injecting more confidence into the forecast for record-setting Great Lakes ice.

Monster Storm Becomes Strongest on Record for Alaska

The Alaskan - Siberian Hurricane
Superstorm Nuri

The remnants of Nuri which has moved into the Bering Sea  has become the most intense storm to ever impact the region.

The former Super Typhoon Nuri has tracked northward into the Bering Sea, located in between Alaska and Russia, and has lost all tropical characteristics.

The system has undergone rapid intensification, producing howling winds as the central pressure plummets to near record levels.

On Friday night, the Ocean Prediction Center analyzed the central area of low pressure to be 924 millibars.

This means that the storm has become the most powerful storm to ever move over the Bering Sea in recorded history in terms of central pressure.

Previous to this storm, the old record stood at 925 millibars from a powerful storm that moved over the Bering Sea on Oct. 25, 1977.

To put this in perspective, the lowest pressure recorded in Hurricane Sandy was 940 millibars.

Despite what NOAA said, there are no good records of storms in this area, at least before the modern era, so we may never know if this is a record.

Conditions will slowly improve across the region on Sunday after the system produced waves as large as 45 feet high and hurricane-force winds.

Winds on Friday gusted to 97 mph at Shemya, Alaska, home to the U.S. Eareckson Air Station.

Large waves should still be anticipated which can make it very difficult to navigate the waters of the Bering Sea.

Super Storm Brings Early Artic Blast To Lower 48

A massive storm expected to help push Arctic air toward the lower 48 states was moving slowly east after blasting parts of Alaska's Aleutian Islands with hurricane-force winds.

The tempest fueled by the remnants of Typhoon Nuri was forecast to play a role in generating a high-pressure system that will allow frigid air to blanket the central plains, starting with eastern Montana and the Dakotas on Sunday. The frigid temperatures are expected to spill south into the central plains on Monday.

The system was centered 220 miles northwest of Adak in the Aleutian chain, David Kochevar, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said early Sunday.

"It's slowly dissipating over the Bering Sea," he said.

Its strongest winds had diminished considerably and were recorded at just 45 mph in Adak and Shemya Island, Kochevar said.

The storm peaked Friday with sustained winds of 70 mph and gusts up to 96 mph on Shemya, forecasters said.

The weakened storm was expected to bring gale-force winds to the Alaska mainland's southwestern coast, typical for this time of year, weather service meteorologist Shaun Baines said.

"The worst conditions were out where there's no people," he said Saturday.

On Shemya Island, 120 civilian contractors staff an early warning radar installation for the U.S. military. Eareckson Air Station on the island 1,500 miles southwest Anchorage saw minor facility damage, Alaskan Command public affairs officer Tommie Baker said.

The corners of a roof were bent back and some dumpsters moved around, but no roof was torn off and the dumpters didn't slam into any vehicles or buildings, Baker said. Workers locked themselves inside to wait out the storm.

Workers had yet to conduct a full assessment of damage around the entire island, Baker said. But workers there are accustomed to extreme weather, including 100-mile winds. The community averages six weather-related lockdowns a year.

The storm surpassed the intensity of 2012's Superstorm Sandy as measured by pressure, but a lack of measuring stations in the remote region means meteorologists didn't have much more data. Sandy caused at least 182 deaths and $65 billion in damage on the East Coast. Nuri, in contrast, hit a sparsely populated region with just a few small communities where people are accustomed to severe weather.

The high-pressure system Nuri will help create is expected to send temperatures plunging across a wide swath of the lower 48 states. High temperatures were forecast to be below freezing on Tuesday across much of Wyoming to Minnesota and parts of Iowa, said Bruce Sullivan of the National Weather Service's prediction center.

The high in Great Falls, Montana, is expected to be 7 degrees, Sullivan said. By Wednesday, high temperatures will struggle to get out of the low 30s in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles, he said.

Remnants of Nuri Explode, Creating a Monster Storm Now Threatening Alaska With Hurricane-Strength Winds

The Aleutian Islands in Alaska are bracing today for a monster storm born of the remnants of Super Typhoon Nuri. The forecast in the westernmost part of the island chain is for hurricane strength winds and waves up to 35 feet high or more.

An animation of infrared satellite images shows the evolution of Nuri into a massive extra-tropical storm. 

(Source: Space Science Engineering Center, University of Wisconsin)

You can see the transformation of the cyclone into an extra-tropical super-storm in the animation of infrared satellite images above. Nuri starts in the extreme lower left corner off of Japan. It’s that round, compact object — white at the center and surrounded by shades of red. It then moves to the northeast off the Japanese coast and transforms into a massive storm (look for the big splotch of red) off the Kamchatka Peninsula.

Today it’s heading for the Aleutians and the Bering Sea.

The storm’s central pressure is forecast to bottom out at a remarkably low 925 millibars. The all-time low pressure ever recorded in Alaska was 926 millibars at Dutch Harbor on Oct. 25, 1977,according to the Weather Underground chief meteorologist Jeff Masters. With that in mind, Masters says Nuri’s remnants are “predicted to become one of Earth’s strongest storms on record.”

In addition to hurricane-strength winds, the monster storm is predicted to kick up waves as high as a five-story building. Here’s an animation showing forecast wave heights, with the color pink representing heights in excess of 15 meters, or 50 feet:

Shemya Island in the far western Aleutians will be experiencing the storm’s full fury today, with winds forecast to hit 90 miles per hour. The U.S. Air Force operates a radar, surveillance and weather station there, as well as a 10,000 foot-long runway, which was first opened in 1943.

The Aleutians are sparsely populated. But may fishing boats ply the rich waters of the Bering Sea. As of yesterday, boats were seeking shelter in Dutch Harbor in the Aleutians. As KTVA TV reported yesterday, “The Saga, a fishing vessel featured on the Discovery Channel’s ‘Deadliest Catch,’ was in Dutch Harbor on Thursday evening to unload crab.”

Rare Eclipse As Sun Rose

On Wednesday October 8th, The Midwest was treated to a rare eclipse called a blood moon as the sun rose.

The sun rose soon after the total period ended and there was first light already toward the end of the "total" period. The skies were clear, offering a great viewing opportunity to see the moon in the western sky. There was no danger to your eyes so you could have stared as long as you liked.

The total eclipse and the rising sun were in the sky simultaneously for a short period of time, allowing watchers to catch a glimpse of both.

Most often, a lunar eclipse occurs before sunrise. On Wednesday morning, the Earth, while passing between the moon and sun, eclipsed the moon in the process.

This lasted through sunrise.

The moon and sun are often visible in the sky at the same time- so what makes this occurrence special?

During a lunar eclipse, the sun and moon are 180 degrees apart in Earth's sky- with one rising as one sets- which should make it theoretically impossible to see both.

Thanks to a trick of the light, in which the atmosphere bends light at a certain angle near the horizon, an optical illusion will make the sun and moon appear slightly higher in the sky.