Help on the Way?
This is year 4 of the drought and year number 5 could be an absolute knockout punch. If California doesn’t get rain this coming winter, the consequences will be very difficult to stomach.
There may be some hope out on the horizon, however! Federal scientists with the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are saying that the probability of an El Niño event being present through the end of 2015 is now 85-90 percent.
El Niño conditions start with warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific Ocean near the equator. That starts in motion a huge weather phenomenon that can have major impacts on global weather. Along the California coast, big events like the one that occurred in the winter of 1997-1998 brought massive amounts of water to the state.
Of course, El Niños can also bring dry weather, so the impacts are as of yet unknown. A lot can happen to a weather pattern between now and the rainy season, but at least it gives us a little bit of hope…
The downside of El Niño is the warming of the waters which messes greatly with the food chain. Salmon and steelhead runs, in particular, can get hard hit by this situation.
On the flip side, anadramous fish runs (not to mention humans) don’t do well when t