Current Status For El Nino

Russ Scott, of the Southwest Watershed Research Center here in Tucson, sent along a link to an El Nino briefing prepared by the Albuquerque, New Mexico, NWS Forecast Office. It is at

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/images/abq/Briefings/2014%20North%20American%20Monsoon%20%28NAM%29%20Outlook.pdf

The figures above and below are from NWS Albuquerque's briefing. The bottom line is that an El Nino is very likely to begin within the next month or two. The figure below shows rainfall anomalies for El Nino summers (July through September) compared to the long-term average. These analyses indicate that New Mexico fares much better, wrt above normal rainfall, during an El Nino summer, than does Arizona. In fact, Utah, Colorado, and northwest Texas also fare better than does Arizona. Conditions in Arizona during El Nino summers have tended to be near normal, except for drier conditions along the Mogollon Rim.

The current El Nino analysis and forecasts from the NWS Climate Prediction Center (CPC) are available at

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf

The current SST anomalies for the Pacific are shown above (from the CPC briefing). The SSTs are warmer than normal from the Dateline eastward to South America and also south of the Gulf of California. The two figures below show percent of average precipitation for the last 30 days (below) and for the last 90 days (bottom) - both for periods ending on May 17th. It is clear that a wetter than normal summer would be welcomed across the Southwest, Central Plains, and northern Mexico.