California Weather Experts Are Beginning To Stumble Into Their Own Bullshit, And It Has To Stop

I was completely exasperated by an article by Rong-Gong Lin II in the Los Angeles Times about El Niño, so I wrote him a letter:
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Hello!:

I’m not a registered subscriber, but I check the LA Times every now and then, particularly on El Niño stories. There was just too much wrong with your last story to let it go without comment. I think the weather experts are getting caught up in their own inconsistencies. Quoting from your story:

“The answer is that much of the rain Northern California has received in recent months is not significantly related to El Niño. Most of that precipitation — including this week's storms hitting San Francisco — is coming from the typical winter weather pattern in California: cold storms from the northern Pacific Ocean, coming northwest of the state.”

This was true early in the season, but the storms that have been hitting Northern California over the past week originate from just north of Hawaii and are definitely influenced by tropical air, and thus are definitely influenced by El Niño. They aren’t northern, Gulf of Alaska storms. Temperatures in Northern California are well above normal. It’s a misfortune that the storms aren’t also hitting Southern California – the storm patterns are offset a bit too far to the west – but the rains in Northern California have been exactly the high-frequency, low-total storms that Bill Patzert has previously-described as the trademark of El Niño.

“One reason why storms haven't been able to get through to Southern California in recent weeks is an area of high pressure southwest of the state that has been unusually persistent, Stanford University climate scientist Daniel Swain said.”

The trouble with this statement is that the area of high pressure southwest of the state is almost always there. It’s not adequate to describe it as unusually persistent, and just leave it at that. What does unusually persistent mean if it’s always there? It’s like describing the Rocky Mountains as unusually persistent. Is the area of high pressure stronger than normal, or larger than normal? Really? Skepticism is warranted!

“Patzert said there was yet again another weakening of the so-called trade winds in the central Pacific Ocean, which will allow the ocean west of Peru to heat up again, further fueling El Niño. ‘This thing is getting ready to have a second peak,’ Patzert said.”

Possibly, but hardly assured. The Australians see a general weakening of El Niño and aren’t calling for a second peak. Patzert needs to be pressed harder on this point. Why does he think there will be a second peak? Are the Australians wrong? Why are they wrong?

The general sense of the reader’s comments is one of increasing skepticism. There is merit here. The rainy season is nearly halfway done. El Niño may eventually arrive in Southern California, but it may not stay long if it arrives just as the rainy season ends. Questions to the weather experts need to be harder and more skeptical.

Marc Valdez
Sacramento Meteorologist