The weather phenomenon known as El Niño is playing havoc with the atmosphere, clouds, and an array of weather-related problems from Asia to California.
It’s also keeping San Antonio and the Texas Hill Country from enjoying the familiar autumn cool fronts that so far haven't shown up.
Cory Van Pelt with the Austin-San Antonio NOAA Weather station in New Braunfels said in typical El Niño years, we may not be able to break out the firewood until October is long over.
“The high pressure sort of acts like a block, and when these troughs of cold air come down from the north, they end up skirting around the high. They can’t dig into it," he said. "The last couple of years we’ve had a warm September and October and then the bottom fell out in November. So it will be interesting to see if it happens again this November."
That’s at least late November. Van Pelt said each El Niño varies, but he believes we can expect at least a little more rainfall than normal in the winter months.
“And then by next summer we’ll probably go, if the models are right, toward La Niña in the opposite direction. And we will not necessarily go back into a drought, but any rainfall from El Niño will end by early next year.”
In Los Angeles, officials were gearing up for heavy downpours from El Niño, and Southeast Asia is suffering from levels of haze and smoke not seen since the last strong El Niño in 1997, which caused more than 10-thousand deaths.
More from the National Weather Service on effects of El Niño:
