Aric Sleeper here, thinking back to the past few years of winter storms (January 2023, I’m looking at you) and forward to the rainy season ahead after attending the City of Monterey’s Winter Storm Ready Town Hall at the Monterey Conference Center on Wednesday evening, Sept. 30, which featured a panel of local experts from Monterey Fire and Public Works, County of Monterey, along with the National Weather Service and PG&E.
With Gov. Gavin Newsom proclaiming a state of emergency to bolster statewide El Niño preparedness before the winter even begins, it was no surprise that the town hall was well attended, with roughly 120 community members listening to the panel with rapt attention.
Through my coverage of the storms of the recent past, and subsequently learning about extreme weather phenomena like atmospheric rivers and bomb cyclones, I thought I was well informed, but after listening to a presentation from National Weather Service Science and Operations Officer Lamont Bain at the event, I realized I needed a refresher on El Niño, which Bain pointed out is a climate pattern and not a storm.
“The fundamental basis for El Niño is above-normal sea surface temperatures across the equatorial Pacific," Bain said at the event. “We measure this in a very specific portion of the equatorial Pacific called the Niño 3.4 region.” Bain explained El Niño conditions start when the sea surface temperatures exceed half a degree Celsius or greater across that region over the course of about 15 months.
“El Niño is not a new phenomenon,” Bain said, adding that the pattern has three phases: the cold phase, La Niña, a neutral phase, and then the warm phase, El Niño. He warned that the upcoming El Niño will be one for the books. “If you extrapolate into the fall and even into the winter, we may be getting close to all-time records for sea surface temperatures across this Niño 3.4 region, so we are looking at prospects of a very strong El Niño.”
However, a strong El Niño doesn’t necessarily equate to a wet winter. “There still is some variability, but what we can say is that typically in these strong and very strong El Niños, odds tilt toward being above normal in terms of precipitation,” Bain said. “But no two [El Niños] are the same.”
Coastal flooding is likely, he said, with documented impacts occurring in all of the instances where the phenomenon was studied. “Coastal flooding will be a threat across the California coastline coming this winter.”
Bain, along with representatives from the city, county and PG&E, all gave pointers to prepare for the potentially brutal wet season ahead, including keeping up on yard maintenance such as clearing gutters, trimming trees and raking leaves—and having an emergency plan, go-bag and power source to not only be prepared for an evacuation but also a shelter-in-place—among a slew of other useful tips, which can be found on the City of Monterey’s website alongside other resource information at monterey.gov/stormcenter. The town hall itself will be published on the City’s YouTube page in the coming weeks.
As a journalist looking down the barrel of a potentially wet winter season, you can bet I’ll be dusting off my rain gear and picking up a new pair of waterproof boots.