Are You Disaster Ready? La Nina May Form In Pacific Within WeeksLa Nina may form in Pacific by May as El Nino disappears
Pastor Dale Morgan
Added: Mar 9th, 2007 8:19 AM
*Are You Disaster Ready? La Nina May Form In Pacific Within WeeksLa Nina
may form in Pacific by May as El Nino disappears*
The La Nina weather anomaly may form in the equatorial Pacific in the
next two to three months, possibly increasing the risks for more
hurricanes later this year in the Atlantic.
"A transition to La Nina conditions is possible during the next two to
three months," the U.S. Climate Prediction Center of the National
Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said in its monthly update on
Thursday.
It also said the El Nino weather pattern, whose wind shear ripped apart
and reduced the amount of hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean in 2006, has
disappeared.
Typically, El Nino causes rampant flooding in Peru and Ecuador while
causing searing drought in Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines
among other countries.
La Nina usually has the opposite effect, and U.S. government forecasters
have warned it may cause a higher-than-normal number of hurricanes.
For instance, with El Nino running at full bore last year, only nine
named storms formed in the Atlantic. That was much lower than the record
28 storms in 2005 that included monster storms like Hurricanes Katrina,
Rita and Wilma which ravaged the U.S. Gulf Coast and caused billions of
dollars worth of damage.
The prediction center said warm sea surface temperatures that
accompanied the last El Nino fell rapidly last December and January.
"These trends in surface and subsurface ocean temperatures indicate that
the warm (El Nino) episode has ended and that conditions are becoming
favorable for La Nina to develop," it said.
Some of the computer forecast models "indicate a rapid transition to La
Nina conditions during March-May 2007," the center added.
The more famous El Nino is an anomaly that results in an abnormal
warming of waters in the equatorial Pacific, wreaking havoc in weather
patterns from Latin America to Asia.
Literally, it means "little boy" in Spanish and was called El Nino by
Latin American anchovy fishermen in the 19th century who first noticed
it usually peaked during the Christmas season.
The last La Nina occurred from 1998 to 2001, leading to drought across
much of the western United States.