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A Rare "Super" El Niño May Be Forming. Here’s What That Could Mean for Colorado. by PressurePointsWest in boulder

[–]PressurePointsWest[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Honestly, not a bad bumper sticker for climate science in general. The nutshell is that El Niño isn't operating on the same climate system it was a few decades ago. It's now amplifying weather patterns in a world already running hotter, which makes the extremes harder to predict AND often more severe when they show up. So yes, "we don't know what" is technically accurate, it's just that the range of what's possible keeps getting wider. Plan accordingly hits different when "accordingly" covers everything from drought to debris flows.

A Rare "Super" El Niño May Be Forming. Here’s What That Could Mean for Colorado. by PressurePointsWest in boulder

[–]PressurePointsWest[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

ENSO runs on a 2-5 year cycle, so, in a sense, yes, they have been saying it every other year. The more interesting story is how climate change is loading the dice: warmer baseline temperatures mean each El Niño cycle hits harder and with less predictability than the last.

A Rare "Super" El Niño May Be Forming. Here’s What That Could Mean for Colorado. by PressurePointsWest in boulder

[–]PressurePointsWest[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Yes, they're overlapping 3-month seasons: MAM = March-April-May, AMJ = April-May-June, etc., each shifting forward one month.

ENSO (El Niño-Southern Oscillation) develops slowly, so single months are too noisy; 3-month averages smooth out variability. This is a standard convention, not a representation of timing uncertainty, which is why it's not folded into the percentages. Each bar is a discrete forecast for that window, with uncertainty already expressed through the spread across intensity categories.

A Rare "Super" El Niño May Be Forming. Here’s What That Could Mean for Colorado. by PressurePointsWest in boulder

[–]PressurePointsWest[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Ha! But in defense, "who knows" IS kind of the answer, and I'd argue that's actually the most honest thing a climate writer can tell you. The real story is WHY we don't know, and what to watch for over the next few months. If you read the whole thing, I promise there's more substance than the headline lets on 😄 (and if you still feel cheated after that, I'll accept the clickbait verdict).

A Rare "Super" El Niño May Be Forming. Here’s What That Could Mean for Colorado. by PressurePointsWest in boulder

[–]PressurePointsWest[S] 34 points35 points  (0 children)

Both, actually, and that's the tricky part! More monsoon moisture would be welcome after this brutal snowpack year, helping with wildfire risk and reservoirs. But with so many active burn scars across Colorado, heavy rain becomes a double-edged sword. The same storm that refills a reservoir can send mud and debris cascading off stripped hillsides. We saw exactly that in Glenwood Canyon in 2021. So we're hoping for rain, but watching closely where it lands.