Climate experts are warning of possible extreme weather as an El Niño weather pattern arrives this summer along the west coast.
“Expect Chaos,” Francis said on ClimateGenn, a podcast that focuses on climate issues, May 25. “Expect unusual events, expect extreme events. We’re going to see heat waves. We’re going to see floods. We’re going to see some strong hurricanes—rapidly intensifying hurricanes.”
Even though El Niño typically creates fewer hurricanes in the North Atlantic, that probably won’t happen this year because the Atlantic Ocean is undergoing an “ocean heat wave,” Francis added. The unusually warm waters are expected to fuel hurricanes in that region.
A strong El Niño combined with warmer-than-usual water in the North Pacific and Atlantic oceans, is making it harder to forecast the weather events, Francis said. The Arctic is also warming about four times faster than the globe.
“This combination of factors is really nothing that we’ve seen before, so it’s a real challenge to make any kind of prediction,” she said.
Average global temperatures tend to spike during El Niño years, which is concerning, according to Francis.
In California, the pattern usually affects the southern region more than the central or northern areas, according to Dalton Behringer, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Monterey, California.
“The actual conditions themselves that define El Niño [will arrive] mid-to-late summer,” Behringer told The Epoch Times.
The Golden State has experienced some weather extremes in the past year as record rainfall and snow lifted the state out of a dry spell during a two-year La Niña, a weather pattern that can cause drier-than-average years. El Niño years are usually wetter-than-average, but many conditions can counteract the pattern or enhance it, depending on what weather patterns develop locally, according to Behringer.
Much of California has seen overcast skies for the past week, but that could change by the weekend.
At the beach in Monterey and Santa Cruz, the sun should make an appearance as warmer temperatures return, according to the local National Weather Service office.
“We’ll see clearer skies and temperatures in the 70s to low 80s in some places,” Behringer said.
A low-pressure system that has blanketed the area with dark clouds, should start moving inland as a high-pressure ridge arrives, he added.
Los Angeles County is also stuck in a “May gray, June gloom” pattern.
“It’s giving us all these clouds with some clearing in the afternoon,” National Weather Service Meteorologist Richard Thompson told The Epoch Times. “It’s very typical for this time of year.”
By Sunday, the skies could clear, he said.