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These false-color images provided by NASA satellites compare warm Pacific Ocean water temperatures from the strong El Nino that brought North America large amounts of rainfall in 1997, right, and the current El Nino as of Dec. 27, 2015, left.
WASHINGTON » Meteorologists say the current El Nino has stormed its way into the record books, tying 1997-1998 as the strongest recorded.
Mike Halpert, deputy director of the federal Climate Prediction Center, said initial figures for October-November-December match the same time period in 1997 for the strongest El Nino. Meteorologists measure El Nino based on how warm parts of the central Pacific for three consecutive months. Records go back to 1950.
El Nino is the natural warming of the central Pacific that changes weather worldwide, including bringing more rain to California.
Halpert said what really matters is what El Nino does during January, when its impact peaks.
El Ninos usually bring heavy rains to California, although it remains to be seen whether people should expect anything like a repeat of 1997 and 1998, when storms killed 17 people, wiped out crops, washed out highways and pushed houses down hillsides.
“DarthNino may finally have California in its sights,” said Jeff Masters, meteorology director of the private Weather Underground.
“A parade of strong Pacific storms characteristic of a strong El Nino event will batter the state this week and will likely bring damaging flooding by the time the second storm in the series rolls through on Wednesday,” Masters said.
However, Masters and meteorologist Ryan Maue of the private WeatherBell Analytics don’t believe this first storm is as powerful as some other Pacific storm systems, and caution that the storms now following it may land elsewhere.
The current forecast calls for a “kind of a nice level of bombardment” over the next two weeks; probably not enough to cause the tremendous flooding of 1998, but then again, that year’s floods didn’t peak until February, Masters said.
As much as 15 inches of rain could fall in the next 16 days in Northern California, with about 2 feet of snow expected in the highest points of the Sierra Nevada, said Johnny Powell, a forecaster with the National Weather Service.
In Southern California, between 2 and 3.5 inches of rain is predicted to fall across the coastal and valley areas, and up to 5 inches falling in the mountains.
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