County to Batten Down the Hatches Ahead of "Godzilla" El Nino

By MARC TORRENCE (Patch National Staff) and City News Service

County officials said today they are gearing up to manage emergency responses to potentially strong rainstorms that could bring dangerous flash flooding and mud and debris slides thanks to an anticipated powerful El Nino this winter.

County Supervisors Hilda Solis and Michael Antonovich said it was critical that the county assess its risks and vulnerabilities.

There is a 90 percent chance that El Nino will hit Los Angeles County this winter and an 85 percent probability that it will last into early spring, Solis said, citing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center.

Scientists are warning that this El Nino could be even stronger than 1997, when storms caused more than a half-billion dollars in damage and led to 17 deaths.

The board directed multiple county departments to report back in 30 days on emergency response plans, flood-control capacity and plans to capture and store stormwater.

Experts have said, however, that even a massive El Nino will not solve the state’s drought. The drought has already contributed to a busy wildfire season, which will exacerbate debris flows when storms come.

Climatologists are monitoring what could become the strongest El Niño ever recorded, a change in Pacific water temperatures that could cause flooding, landslides and perhaps the warmest winter ever in the United States.

Scientists put an 85 percent chance of it continuing into next spring.

One National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration blog jokingly referred to it as the “Bruce Lee” El Niño, and a NASA scientist took that a step further saying it has “Godzilla” potential.

“It’s already pretty warm,” Tom Di Liberto, an NOAA meteorologist at the climate prediction center, said. “It’s already a moderate to strong El Niño; the trend’s just continuing month in, month out.”

El Niño is a climate pattern that comes up every two to seven years. The waters in the Pacific warm near the equator and can impact climate around the globe.

Daniel Swain, a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford who runs the California Weather Blog, told the New York Times that this year’s could cause 2015 to be “very likely to be the warmest year on record.”

The most likely place for El Niño-related flooding is the southern United States. Landslides are most likely in California, caused by what is expected to be an increase in rain over most of the state and more snow in the mountains.

Outside the United States, the system could cause droughts in Australia and India and flooding in Peru.

While such forecasts conjure up images of doomsday weather and end-of-the-world storms, the reality is much different. In many places in the United States, El Niño actually brings relief, with some negative effects scattered throughout.

The water temperature makes for a warmer winter and increased rainfall for much of the United States. It also disrupts storm-causing winds, leading to a drop in the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean, a trend that’s already playing out as we enter the heart of the hurricane season.

A 1999 study estimated that while the 1997-1998 El Niño caused $ 4 billion in damage, it brought with it $19 billion of economic relief: lower heating bills and less damage from hurricanes.

“In general, if you look at the United States as a whole during El Niño years, technically there’s a benefit,” Di Liberto said. “The negative outcomes, those are, generally speaking, more visible. People tend to see those more. That’s when you look at the landslides and the floods.”

Scientists are predicting that Pacific waters could warm by at least 2 degrees celsius, which has been topped only three times since 1950, the earliest since data has been kept. So far, temperature differences are “up there with the warmest we’ve seen up until this point,” Di Liberto said.

El Niño is expected to peak in late fall and continue on into the winter and early spring.

While California will be the main target for landslides, it will get some much-needed relief with the extra rain.

“The big question will be going forward: How much of California is going to see that increased chance for above-average precipitation?” Di Liberto asked. “There is a chance that we could see above-average rainfall for the entire state. But at least right now the clearest signal is for the central and southern parts of the state to see potentially above average precipitation.”

Just don’t expect the increased rainfall to bring much relief to the historic western drought.

“This drought is a four-year drought,” Di Liberto said. “The idea that this El Niño is going to be the saving relief to all of this drought is probably not accurate. It’s going to take more than one year’s worth of rainfall to really get out of this drought.”