[BostonCard]

The Sacramento Bee had a good explanation:

https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/a...67041.html

Specifically, the temperature anomaly, which is expected to reach about 3.5 standard deviations above the mean, is a 1 in 4000 year event.

These sea surface temperatures are almost 3.5 standard deviations above average for this time of year – the equivalent of a once-in-4,000-year event under normal conditions. Meanwhile, the upper-ocean heat content fueling this event is nearly double what was observed at the same point during the development of the 2023 El Niño.

However, how this translates to precipitation in California is not the same.  The expectation is that it is more likely to produce a wetter winter.  But the article notes that the last major El Niño (2015-16), dubbed the "Godzilla" El Niño, despite being under 3 standard deviations of an anomaly, didn't produce excess rainfall in California.

The 2015-16 El Niño, the strongest on record and dubbed as a “Godzilla” El Niño at the time, did not produce expected drought-busting rains for the state. Swain said this and the tiny sample size of large El Niño events also makes it difficult to communicate the situation.

I think this captures it well:

An El Niño of this magnitude is likely to produce more intense versions of its global climatic effects, and bring with it the risk of completely new climatic developments. Sailing into uncharted waters, worldwide weather patterns — wet or dry — may trend toward the extreme.

Hoping we get above average rainfall, as predicted, but not so much that it produces catastrophic flooding.

BC

[BostonCard]

The Sacramento Bee had a good explanation:

https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/a...67041.html

Specifically, the temperature anomaly, which is expected to reach about 3.5 standard deviations above the mean, is a 1 in 4000 year event.

These sea surface temperatures are almost 3.5 standard deviations above average for this time of year – the equivalent of a once-in-4,000-year event under normal conditions. Meanwhile, the upper-ocean heat content fueling this event is nearly double what was observed at the same point during the development of the 2023 El Niño.

However, how this translates to precipitation in California is not the same.  The expectation is that it is more likely to produce a wetter winter.  But the article notes that the last major El Niño (2015-16), dubbed the "Godzilla" El Niño, despite being under 3 standard deviations of an anomaly, didn't produce excess rainfall in California.

The 2015-16 El Niño, the strongest on record and dubbed as a “Godzilla” El Niño at the time, did not produce expected drought-busting rains for the state. Swain said this and the tiny sample size of large El Niño events also makes it difficult to communicate the situation.

I think this captures it well:

An El Niño of this magnitude is likely to produce more intense versions of its global climatic effects, and bring with it the risk of completely new climatic developments. Sailing into uncharted waters, worldwide weather patterns — wet or dry — may trend toward the extreme.

Hoping we get above average rainfall, as predicted, but not so much that it produces catastrophic flooding.

BC