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Could current El Niño bring milder winters for Canadians ?

Could current El Niño bring milder winters for Canadians ?

While summer officially kicks off in just over a month’s time, many Canadians have already enjoyed some beautiful weather, but weather forecasters are keeping their eye on El Niño conditions currently brewing in the Pacific and what it may have in store for us.

When the surface of the equatorial regions of the Pacific Ocean becomes abnormally warm due to prevailing winds, El Niño-meaning ‘little boy’ in Spanish- develops, frequently impacting weather patterns across the entire North American continent.

The brunt of its effects are usually felt across western and southern regions, particularly pronounced during winter. However, if El Niño packs a larger punch then it can even lead to noticeable dampening of tropical storm and hurricane activity in the tropical Atlantic and Caribbean during the season due to increasing westerly wind shear.

The current El Niño was officially declared by the US-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in March. And just this past week the agency’s meteorologists released an advisory that forecasts a 80 percent chance that a weak El Niño will continue throughout the rest of the year.

For Canadians however its effects always remain harder to determine because of its high variability but there are signs change may be on the way, says accuweather.com’s chief meteorologist, Brett Anderson.

“Currently, we are under weak El Niño conditions but we expect it to strengthen to moderate or even strong status as early as late summer, but more likely in the fall,” he explained.

“We do think the El Niño will be partly responsible for the warmer-than-normal temperatures this summer in British Columbia and perhaps the southern Plains and with less Atlantic tropical systems expected this season there will be a reduced threat for a land falling storm in Atlantic Canada.”

Moderate to strong El Niño’s during the winter typically bring widespread above-normal temperatures to western Canada much like what we had seen earlier this year, and throughout the southern Plains with drier conditions near the Great Lakes.

However some predictions call for a milder winter across eastern Canada if El Niño is strong during the season, and Anderson says this may very well be the case if the cold air mass remains mostly locked up across northern and interior Atlantic Canada.

For many eastern Canadians this would most likely be welcomed since the last two winters were some of the coldest seen in the last seven decades.

Refining predictions for both global and regional weather patterns and the impact of El Niño very much relies on monitoring ocean water temperature patterns in the Pacific, says Doug Gillham, meteorologist and Forecast Centre Manager with The Weather Network in Oakville, Ontario.

“While the temperature pattern in the Pacific Ocean resembled El Niño last year, a full El Niño was not able to develop because the wind pattern in the atmosphere was often opposite to what is necessary for a strengthening El Nino, however, this year the wind pattern is conducive for further development,” said Gillham.

“So we expect that this El Niño event will become moderately strong as we progress through the summer and into the fall.”

While there is considerable variation in weather models used by different forecasters, one thing looks promising: if the current El Niño pattern holds up then at least for those in the eastern parts of the nation the upcoming winter will most likely be nothing like what they went through the last couple of years.