You’re going to get tired of hearing or seeing the words “El Niño.”
Even being into weather as much as I am, I confess that I already am tired of it, even when I’m the one writing it.
Perhaps the personification of El Niño by the late Chris Farley on Saturday Night Live can give us some comic relief as we hear this term repeated ad nauseam, including 39 times in this Cardinal Weather column, counting headlines.
El Niño is sometimes presented as all-powerful force that dictates every aspect of climate and weather across the world in highly predictable and absolutely iron-clad ways. This is hyperbole.
But, alas, El Niño also can’t be blithely dismissed or ignored. What looks likely to be a developing strong El Niño is already a reality, with the possibility that it could be one of if not the strongest on record.
Continued spotty rain eases dryness for some, floods a few spots
Current weather: Pretty much the same old, same old of recent weeks, with spotty and streaky showers and storms, dumping torrential rain on some while sprinkling in the dust for others, if that. There has been enough rain in enough places that drought statuses have come down a category for many locations in Cardinal News’ Southwest and Southside Virginia coverage area. (Latest U.S. Drought Monitor map for Virginia linked here – renewing on Thursday.) Influenced by a sluggish upper-level low to the west, far too much rain fell in a stretch from eastern Surry County, North Carolina, through western Patrick County and eastern Carroll County in Virginia on Saturday night and Sunday, up to 10 inches in spots, leading to a dangerous flash flooding episode, flowing far away from where it was actually raining the hardest. Temperatures will remain not all that hot, not all that cool, with 80s highs and 60s lows most days for most spots in our region through mid-month.
‘The little boy’ may throw a tantrum
El Niño refers to the irregularly recurring warming of a stripe of sea surface stretching across the equatorial Pacific Ocean. It has been known about since at least the 1600s, gaining its name as “the little boy” in Spanish from the Christ child, as warm ocean waters were often observed by Peruvian fishermen near Christmas. (Its cooler-water opposite, La Niña, or “the little girl,” wasn’t named until the 1980s.)
After several years in which La Niña has been more prevalent, El Niño began developing in the spring and was fully declared earlier this summer.
The shift we have experienced from the persistent heat dome of late June and early July to a not-so-hot, more showery pattern since the Fourth of July, may reflect some influence of El Niño, as our summer weather typically isn’t very hot for long during El Niño.
But, consistent with the observations of those Peruvian fishermen in centuries past, El Niño often peaks in the late fall through winter, and certainly its more consistent impacts on our region’s weather are noted during that time because of the seasonal shift southward of stronger upper-level wind flow.
This one is presently expected to peak in the last quarter of 2026 with an 81% chance of average sea surface temperatures 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) or higher, according to NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, which would put it among the very few strongest on record.
How strong or weak El Niño becomes, and how far east or west the warmest part of it is located, and what other climate oscillations are present all factor into the general expectations for seasonal weather effects in the United States.
We can revisit all that down the road when a little more is fleshed out about that data. For now, let’s get out of the way three things that are sometimes presented as a little too definitive about El Niño’s effects for our region and our neighbors.
El Niño is not absolutely certain to end our long-running drought
The drought has already eroded slightly with rounds of numerous though streaky showers and storms the past few weeks. It is still far from being over, as we have a lot of rain debt to make up to get reservoirs and water tables back to something closer to normal.
El Niño is likely to enhance the subtropical branch of the jet stream that increases the odds we will have frequent wet storms in the cooler months of the calendar. But, sometimes, that wetness is suppressed to our south or lifted to our west and north by other atmospheric patterns.
This is unlikely to be a bone-dry winter intensifying the drought, but it could easily be a not-so-wet winter with dryness resuming after El Niño fades away and perhaps gets replaced by the cool-water La Niña patterns that have dominated most of years since 2020 and undoubtedly contributed to bringing on recent dryness.
Short answer: El Niño probably brings about patterns that significantly reduce or even reverse our drought — the 2002-03 El Niño winter pulled us out of an even deeper and longer drought than this one — but it’s not a certainty.
El Niño is not guaranteed to give us an especially snowy winter
If high pressure in the northern latitudes turns out to be frequent and expansive and forces cold air southward to meet the enhanced moisture of the southern branch of the jet stream, the winter ahead could be an epic one for snow. (For most of our region beside some of Southside, think about the 2009-10 winter, with three big snowstorms and 3-5 feet total for many locations.)
But without that, the warmth lifted northward by El Niño-linked storminess can overwhelm the pattern and keep the deep cold away, especially during a strong El Niño. It can be cool or mild and rainy rather than snowy. (For most of our region outside the Southwest corner where many places did get one 6+ snow, think about our most recent El Niño winter, in 2023-24.)
There is, however, something of a heightened propensity for big-ticket snowstorms during an El Niño, even when most of the winter is mild.
Four of the last five snow events that buried roughly half or more of our region in a foot or more — January 1998, December 2009, January 2016, December 2018 — occurred during El Niño. (The exception was February 2014, during a neutral period that was neither El Niño or La Niña.)
Those in 1998 (west of the Blue Ridge) and 2018 (nearly regionwide foot-plus except somewhat less southwest corner) were essentially “one-hit wonders” with not much snow the rest of the winter, while the January 2016 snowstorm (8-16 inches for most) was followed three weeks later by a less intense snow event (4-10 inches) in a winter mostly known for a warm Christmas and the Appomattox County tornado on Feb. 24.
Short answer: El Niño tends to be boom or bust for snow in winter, sometimes mostly bust with a single boom or two.
El Niño is not an impenetrable shield for Atlantic hurricanes.
There is a good reason there are typically fewer hurricanes in the Atlantic basing during an El Niño in the Pacific.
Strong winds generated aloft over the warmer waters cross over the Atlantic and shear off the tops of many would-be hurricanes. Tropical cyclones, developing from the energy of evaporation and condensation of warm sea water, need more stable air aloft to grow, not fierce winds.
But while there are usually fewer hurricanes in the Atlantic during El Niño than during La Niña or neutral periods, it is always possible that one or two storms will develop in a favorable window and become noteworthy.
One very notable hurricane that heavily affected our region was Agnes in June 1972, which spurred heavy rain far inland, pushing many rivers to some of their highest levels on record. Hurricane Betsy, a Category 4 storm that pounded Louisiana in 1965, also developed during an El Niño. The 21st century has brought us landfalling Gulf Coast hurricanes with Lili in 2002 and Idalia in 2023.
What Atlantic hurricanes do develop during El Niño periods often form close to the U.S. coastline, rather than making a long crossing of the Atlantic. So preparedness time can be cut substantially for coastal regions.
Short answer: For our region, it’s probable that tropical systems will not be our principal drought-breakers/flood-makers in months ahead, but it’s not impossible one could affect us. Always keep an eye on the weather if traveling to coastal areas. The season’s only big hurricane may form close to the coast with little notice.
Global climate effects
We could well be in uncharted territory if this El Niño exceeds the 1998 record and Pacific equatorial sea surface temperatures end up 2.5 degrees Celsius or higher. The 1877-78 El Niño may have been similarly strong, but we don’t have a lot of data about it. So perhaps some of the impacts will be different than what has been experienced with El Niño in recent decades in ways we can’t fully comprehend yet.
How El Niño and La Niña fit into the picture of warming global sea and air temperatures has not been fully detailed, and scientists will be watch closely how this El Niño develops plus its effects and after-effects to get a better handle on it.
It is expected that the present El Niño will inject significant heat into the atmosphere, setting a new global average temperature record in 2027, possibly in 2026 surpassed again by 2027. Currently, 2024, 2023 and 2025 are at the top of the list.
In the next several months, the bottom line for El Niño specific to our region is that it probably will get wetter, but probably not from tropical systems, and cold air may catch up with some of that wetness once or twice or a bunch of times for snow this winter, but none of this is certain especially if El Niño reaches previously unachieved high levels.
Journalist Kevin Myatt has been writing about weather for 20 years. His weekly column, appearing on Wednesdays, is sponsored by Oakey’s, a family-run, locally-owned funeral home with locations throughout the Roanoke Valley.
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