Classic El Nino Pattern Giving Us In Vermont Break From Storms

Forecast map for next Monday shows a large
storm taking a far southern track near the
Gulf Coast and Florida. It's a common pattern
during El Nino winters. It's still unknown whether
that new storm you see in California next
Monday will track south as well. 

 A storm is about to make a cross-country journey west to east through the United States, as winter storms often do. This one will really have a southern flair to it, though.

We have a  raging El Nino going on now, which is a periodic warming of the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of South America. 

One effect this has is to force storms to often take a more southerly route than they usually do. The result is cold and wet conditions in the South, with warm and dry for the season in the northern tier of states.

Which is exactly what's setting up. 

A storm packing heavy rain will slap into the California coast by Wednesday night and Thursday. The way it looks now, the storm will cross the southern Rockies then reorganize over Texas Sunday.

From there, it looks like it will move southeastward into the Gulf of Mexico Sunday, then cross over Florida to become an oddly south nor'easter near the Bahamas early next week. Then it will head out to sea.

This is kind of a long range forecast, so things could change. But I'm impressed by how far south this thing will be.

Meanwhile, a strong ridge of high pressure is setting up over south-central Canada. That, too, is part of the El Nino pattern. It's also helping to suppress storms to the south,  at least for now.  This will ensure near record high temperature for a few days over the Upper Midwest and parts of southern Canada.

For us, in Vermont, we're on the east side of this big high pressure system, so we'll have a northwest flow of air. That will keep temperatures generally near normal, since the air coming from Canada isn't nearly as chilly as it should be this time of year.

This northwest air flow will also feed moisture-starved weather disturbances through, which means we could get some bouts of light precipitation over the next 10 days or so, but nothing dramatic. The first of those disturbances is due Thursday with some light rain and snow. (Thursday will be the mildest day of the week, hence the rain risk)

Not all these southern storms that cross the nation stay south.  

The eastern United States is a wildcard during El Nino years, since storms sometimes hit California, make it to the Gulf Coast, then turn north instead of heading to Florida.

That's what happened with those two big wind storms earlier this month.  The storms hit southern California, then made their way to somewhere near southeastern Texas.

Since the storms were so close to the Gulf of Mexico, they were able to pick up a lot of moisture an energy from those warm waters. Then those two storms turned northeastward, blasting Vermont and surrounding states with damaging winds and flooding rains.

These southern storm tracks during El Nino years often last into March or even April.  That's bad for the South.  Any of these storms no matter what the season can touch off tornadoes down there. Those twisters are even more likely by March and April as the overall atmosphere starts to warm. 

El Nino patterns can be a little depressing for us here in Vermont, too when we get toward March.  Sometimes, the southern storms follow a path just to the south of New England. Which in turn can bring us some rather snowy weather in March and April. 

It doesn't happen every time.  But in Vermont, sometimes El Nino winters don't start until we're ready for spring to start