Climatologists say an El Niño climate pattern is increasingly likely this summer, which could mean a wet summer and fall for Southwest Colorado, followed by another dry winter.
Considerable uncertainty remains about when El Niño will develop and how strong it will become. But the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center said in an April 10 bulletin that there’s a better than 50 percent chance of an El Niño pattern developing by summer.
Also, the center’s three-month climate forecast calls for a probability of above-normal precipitation in the Four Corners during May, June and July.
“Typically during El Niño events, we have a wet summer and fall, then kind of a dry winter, and then a wet spring,” said Joe Ramey, a National Weather Service climatologist in Grand Junction.
Precipitation this summer would be welcomed by many residents.
“It would be fantastic,” said Barbara Jefferies, a longtime cattle rancher who operates a ranch near Elmore’s Corner with her husband, Ned. “Everybody would celebrate because it is so dry. If it would just rain, it would make everybody happy.”
La Plata County is dry throughout, varying from “abnormally dry” in the north, to “moderate drought” in central La Plata County to “severe drought” in the southern portion of the county, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
Above-normal precipitation also could ease the danger of wildfire, but Butch Knowlton, director of the La Plata County Office of Emergency Management, worried the rain may come too late.
“The biggest question a lot of us would have is, what happens before the precipitation falls?” he said.
If storms bring dry lightning before monsoon season begins, conditions would be ripe for wildfire.
“The resulting fires could be very significant,” Knowlton said.
Recent weather is drying out piñon, juniper and other material that fuels fires, he said.
“Fuels are drying out every day that we get sunshine and every day we have these wind conditions,” Knowlton said.
El Niño tends to strengthen the usual climate pattern here – a dry early summer and midwinter, with a wet late summer and fall, said Ramey.
An El Niño is marked by unusually warm Pacific equatorial temperatures. El Niño means “the little boy” or “Christ child” in Spanish. The name derives from the phenomenon’s tendency to arrive around Christmas, according to the National Weather Service.
There have been 16 El Niños since 1950, Ramey said.
“Our last El Niño has been awhile,” he said. “It was 2009-10, and it was a strong one.”
While El Niño events tend to deliver certain trends in Southwest Colorado, there are no guarantees, Ramey said.
“There’s this thing called weather that runs roughshod over any climate trend,” he said.
cslothower@durangoherald.com
