Forensic meteorologist Jan Null knows all about El Niño.
Null, who founded the Saratoga-based Golden Gate Weather Services consulting firm after retiring from a 24-year career with the National Weather Service, first encountered El Niño in 1982 and again in 1997.
“El Niño, very simply, is a periodic warming of the tropical waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean,” he explained. “That warming water influences some global weather patterns, and with the exception of the seasons, El Niño is probably the single most influential weather factor that happens on the planet.”
Null says there are a lot of misconceptions about El Niño. In fact, he has a section on his website, ggweather.com, dedicated to misconceptions that says, “El Niño is not an adjective.”
“It is not a big storm,” Null said. “It’s not something we’re going to see on a satellite picture and say, ‘El Niño has come to California.’ El Niño never comes to anyplace but the tropics.”
Null’s study of this year’s El Niño conditions gives him reason to feel optimistic that heavy rains lie ahead. “We’re very much paralleling the temperatures that we saw in 1997,” he said. “So it looks like we’re going to get into that very strong type of El Niño like we’ve already seen in 1982 and the 1997-98 winters.”
That forecast sounds good to the ears of drought-stricken Californians, but it comes with the caveat that there are no guarantees because there are just too many variables at play.
“The bottom line is it’s a very strong El Niño. The stronger it is, the more it tilts to a wet winter in California in general,” Null said. “The signal is less confident in Northern California, but as El Niño gets stronger the odds increase because a stronger El Niño pushes the boundary between at normal and above normal rainfall farther north.”
You can expect to see a lot of Null this winter because his clients include the San Jose Mercury News, KNTV [NBC Bay Area] and KTVU. Null describes his forecasting as “CSI weather” and says, “I try to explain things simply.”
Knowing what he does, Null is not ready to stop conserving water at home. “California does not get enough water, so if we can mitigate that through conservation then that’s great,” he said. “I’m of the school that we should always put buckets in our showers.”
All prognostications aside, though, Null said he is pretty sure of one thing: “I’m looking to capture some water in drums from my downspouts this winter.”
