El Niño may hike
Pacific hurricane risk

The periodic warming trend
is growing at breakneck speed

Star-Bulletin staff and wire

Get ready, Hawaii. Pull up your waders, Midwest and Southeast. Northern Great Plains, look ahead to a well-deserved warm, dry winter. El Nino's back in town and federal weather experts warn the surge of warm water in the eastern Pacific may be the most disruptive in more than a decade.

Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center officially declared an El Nino event-in-the-making yesterday, saying the warming trend is developing at an almost unheard-of pace.

"This is not the average El Nino. This is looking much more like a big one than a small one. This is shaping up to have a large, significant impact all across the globe," said Ants Leetmaa, director of the center. Water temperatures off the coast of Peru and Baja California is already running more than 7 degrees above normal.

In Hawaii, National Weather Service forecaster Bob Farrell said that in the past, El Nino years meant more tropical storms in the central Pacific.

"That doesn't mean that there will be more storms in Hawaii, just more tropical storms in the central Pacific."

But Farrell also acknowledged that there is a greater possibility that Hawaii could be affected by hurricane activity.

"If there is going to be a hurricane, it is more likely to happen this year," Farrell said.

Farrell said island residents should be prepared. "The concern should be for readiness. They should have batteries on hand and be ready for a hurricane."

Hawaii's hurricane season runs from June through November.

In 1994, an El Nino year, there were 11 hurricanes in the central Pacific area, but all went south of the islands. Hurricanes Iwa in 1982 and Iniki in 1992 occurred during El Nino years.

An El Nino season also makes the climate in Hawaii drier, Farrell said.

The phenomenon got its name from the Spanish words for baby Jesus because it generally begins around Christmas.

Although forecasters had seen signs that the weather pattern was shifting, they've been surprised at its intensity, since the other El Nino events of this decade have been relatively weak.

The phenomena is expected to persist at least through next winter, and the prediction center is quite positive about what that means for November through March: "Wetter, cooler weather for the Southern half of the U.S., while the northern part of the country from Washington east to the western Great lakes will experience warmer than normal temperatures."

Forecasters made no prediction for the Northeast, although historically El Nino events have meant average to above average temperatures and precipitation there.

Leetmaa said the summer effects of El Nino are less consistent, and thus forecasters are hesitant to say what influence it might have on rainfall, but said he wouldn't be surprised if the drenching starts even earlier and extends even farther north than the southern tier of states.

Although climatologists are divided over how much a role El Nino played in the epic flooding of the Missouri and Mississippi basins in the spring and summer of 1993, the record is clear about the havoc created by the 1982-83 warm event.

The tropical tradewinds actually reversed for a time, and it caused weather disasters on almost every continent.

"I think this event could well approach the 1982-83 El Nino in scale," Leetmaa said.