What December? Chinook-like 40s ahead

The sun comes out again tomorrow, Minnesota.

In a normal December, sunshine after snow usually means an icy Arctic wind. Not in this El Nino modified winter. Get used to your local weatherman babbling about unseasonably mild inbound Pacific air masses and melting snow.

We're living in a slow motion, perennial late autumn time warp this winter. The culprit? Likely the strongest El Nino on record with a side of climate change. A strong dose of weather weirding.

Welcome to a 'Kansas City' winter.

String of 40s ahead

The Twin Cities National Weather Service graph above may actually be too conservative on temps the next 10 days.

The model guidance products from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Global Forecast System and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts  are cranking out what look like a string of days more then a week long with highs in the 40s for the Twin Cities and most of southern and western Minnesota.

We could see a few days well into the mid, even upper 40s once the snow is gone. Eight consecutive days at or above 40 degrees in December? I'm guessing that would be approaching record territory.

Here's the map. Watch as a westerly wind flow blows an increasingly mild Pacific air mass into the Midwest by Friday. Another warm front sailing across southern Canada? This is going to be a weird winter.

Cue the "Great Snow Eater."

Chinook is the name native Americans gave to the mild, snow eating winds on the eastern slopes of the Rockies that blow in winter as warm air descends from the mountains.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEJmQglWnQY

chinook

The name given to the foehn in western North America, especially on the plains to the lee or eastern side of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada. The chinook brings relief from the cold of winter, but its most important effect is to melt or sublimate snow: A foot of snow may disappear in a few hours. (Glossary of the AMS)

Minnesota may not have a true chinook wind, but the effects of chinook warmed air masses of Pacific origin do spill eastward in winter toward the Upper Midwest. That kind of weather pattern looks to dominate the first half of December, and maybe much of the coming winter.

Record El Nino responsible

There's really no dancing around what's causing our extremely mild November lingering into December. The long predicted Super El Nino event in the tropical Pacific has now reached record proportions.

Tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures have now eclipsed those from the 1997-98 event.

Here's an update on where we stand from New Scientist:

The current extreme El Niño is now the strongest ever recorded, smashing the previous record from 1997-8. Already wreaking havoc on weather around the world, the new figures mean those effects will probably get worse. Climate change could be to blame and is known to be making the extreme impacts of El Niño on weather more likely.

The 1997-8 El Niño killed 20,000 people and caused almost $97 billion of damage as floods, droughts, fires, cyclones and mudslides ravaged the world.

Now the current El Niño has surpassed the 1997-8 El Niño on a key measure, according to the latest figures released by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency.El Niño occurs when warm water that has piled up around Australia and Indonesia spills out east across the Pacific Ocean towards the Americas, taking the rain with it.

A key measure of its intensity is the warmth of water in the central Pacific. In 1997, at its peak on 26 November, it was 2.8 °C above average. According to the latest measurements, it reached 2.8 °C on 4 November this year, and went on to hit 3.1 °C on 18 November – the highest temperatures ever seen in this region.

An unprecedented El Nino in the Pacific superimposed on climate change. Get ready for some very weird weather events this winter.