El Nino Keeps Getting Stronger...The LA Times.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-el-nino-forecast-20151015-story.html

The National Weather Service now expects El Niño to bring greater-than-average rainfall to virtually all of California, forecasters said for the first time Thursday.

The new forecast is significant because it raises the chance that El Niño will send big storms not only to Southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area — as has already been forecast — but also to the mountains that feed California’s most important reservoirs, which fuel water for much of the entire state. California’s largest reservoirs, Shasta Lake and Lake Oroville, are in the northern edge of the state.

If patterns from previous strong El Niños repeat, “there will be a number of significant storms that will bring heavy rains. What that brings will be floods and mudslides,” said Mike Halpert, deputy director of the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center. “We’re more confident we’re going to be seeing El Niño through this winter."

[tularetom]

1. We need snow

Rain is OK but it's snowmelt that keeps our reservoirs full all summer.

So I hope some of these storms they're predicting are cold enough to dump a shitload of snow on the Sierra and Cascades.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. I think that will be inevitable.

Look at the map. It shows precipitation, but at the higher elevations, that means snow.

I hope the same as you!

[Auggie]

7. We need more storage capacity. The snow is melting too fast.

Global warming, you know.

[bananas]

2. Apparently it won't affect Mexico at all

[CaliforniaPeggy]

4. Hard to say, since the map ends at the border.

I would expect it to affect Mexico too.

I'll bet there's a weather map somewhere that would give you that information.

[msongs]

5. already has been the pnieapple express pattern several times this fall, a dry run for when the cold

air upper lows are stronger and can pull tropical moisture northwards more effectively. once could see the lows off central CA and the trail of moisture to hawaii but the dynamics were not quite strong enough to produce much rain yet

[JayhawkSD]

6. Different dynamic altogether

The early storms we have seen have been remnants of tropical storms. El Nino has caused an abundance of them, and has pushed some of them further north, but this is not "pineapple express" pattern at play. That occurs when troughs in the jet stream dig far enough south to draw tropical moisture up into California, and we have not even come close to that yet.

[Nitram]

8. Of course it's getting stronger.

More energy ion the system means greater extremes in events. But that also means it could completely disappear at some point. Our biggest fear should be that the thermohaline "conveyor belt" ocean current will break down and cease functioning.