A friend of mine asked me yesterday what the weather forecast for summer was going to be. Since I can't predict the future (actually I can but I've been sworn by the government and the CA Lottery to keep my powers a secret) I can only speculate how the current La Nina will influence the weather 6 months from now. First off, let me say that I love El Nino summers. El Nino's for southern California are characterized by warmer water temperatures, less fog, and an increase in monsoonal moisture to make it more humid and feel like a slice of Hawaii around here. With that being said, you can only guess what La Nina brings- colder water temperatures which has a profound effect on various aspects of the weather. First off there are a variety of factors which create fog but one of them is the contrast of cold water and the warmer land temperatures. With La Nina creating colder water temperatures, it only enhances the chances of creating fog- and our air temps are cooler at the coast. Secondly, cold water means less of a chance you're going to wear trunks in the water this summer- remember how many days you trunked it last summer- the start of this current La Nina? Probably just a handful of days. And lastly, with the colder water temperatures, there's less of a chance of hurricanes forming in the Pacific off mainland Mexico, moving towards Cabo, and eventually heading towards us. With less tropical moisture forming there's less of a chance of hurricane surf for us or their humid clouds drifting overhead. Now of course there are a million factors at work in our atmosphere so all of this could be turned on it's head. A good example would be the deluge of rain we received this past December. Being a La Nina year, we shouldn't have had the wet dump we got, but an anomaly in the Arctic Oscillation fed us more moisture than usual. The good news in all of this is that the La Nina will start fading towards the end of spring and anything can happen. Last summer was a real dud so let's hope for the best in 2011! For more info on the current La Nina, check out the
weekly update from NOAA.
