Our ancestors knew something about the weather that today’s climate alarmists don’t — if you don’t like it, wait a while and it will change:
An El Niño that is among the strongest on record is gaining strength in the Pacific Ocean, and climate scientists say California is likely to face a wet winter. “There’s no longer a possibility that El Niño wimps out at this point. It’s too big to fail,” said Bill Patzert, climatologist for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge. And the winter over North America is definitely not going to be normal,” he said.
Just three weeks ago, the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center raised the odds of California getting doused with a wetter-than-average winter. Southern California now has more than a 60% chance of a wet winter, a 33% chance of a normal winter and less than a 7% chance of a dry winter. The odds of a wet winter further north are increasing too. San Francisco has more than a 40% chance of a wet winter, 33% chance of a normal winter and less than a 27% chance of a dry winter.
Scientists know that El Niño is getting stronger because of rising sea-level ocean temperatures in the Pacific west of Peru, and a change in directions of the wind along the equator that allow warm waters to surge toward the Americas.
The Los Angeles Times story goes on to gleefully note the destruction wreaked by the wet winter of 1997-98, during which downtown L.A. got a year’s worth of rainfall in the month of February alone (if you know L.A., not really that surprising). And about that “man-made global warming” drought thingummy:
But Patzert issued a note of warning to Californians: Don’t think this El Niño spells the end of this state’s punishing four-year drought. The last record El Niño that ended in 1998 was quickly followed by the arrival of El Niño’s dry sister, La Niña. “Thinking ahead one year, could we be whiplashed from deluge back to drought again?” Patzert said. “Because remember, La Niña is the diva of drought.”
Patzert said that in the last 140 years in California, seven out of every 10 years are dry, so it would be foolish to declare an end to water conservation during this winter’s rains. “This is no time to celebrate and backtrack on our water-saving habits that we’ve developed recently,” Patzert said. “Because conservation is going to be our new lifestyle. Our new normal.”
Dude, I grew up in California and have spent a good deal of my life there. Tell me one time that eastern-style water wasting was ever normal — except, of coure, by easterners — in the Golden State. Sheesh…
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