MELBOURNE, AUSTRAILIA - More El Niño news out of the Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology this week: the weather system has once again strengthened. The Bureau says they are now reporting patterns similar to the record 1997-1998 event.

“It is unusual to have such a broad extent of warmth across the tropical Pacific,” the Melbourne-based bureau said in its most recent update. “The last time this occurred was during the 1997–98 El Niño.”

Sea-surface temperature indexes for the central and eastern tropical Pacific are more than 1°C above average for a sixth week, the bureau said, adding that models have been showing the central Pacific will warm further over the coming months. In May, forecasters at the center said they expected the current event to be substantial. 

As we’ve previously reported, El Niño is a warming of a certain patch of the central Pacific that changes weather patterns worldwide, associated with flooding in some places, droughts elsewhere, a generally warmer globe, and fewer Atlantic hurricanes. The current event is the first since 2010. 

While this is not expected to have a direct impact on California’s drought conditions, any extra rain El Niño may bring would be more than welcomed by the state. The Australian bureau made sure to note that it isn’t possible at this stage to determine exactly how intense this event will be, and the strength of a system doesn’t always correspond to its impact.

The majority of models suggest the Pacific will continue to warm in the coming months, possibly reaching strong El Niño levels, the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said earlier this month.

“It is unlikely that the current event will dissipate in the near future, and hence impacts are likely to be apparent for at least the next three to six months,” the WMO continued. “Events typically decay in the first quarter of the year following their formation.”

Stay tuned as we continue to update you on this developing weather system.