Welcome to Weathered Questions, where we answer the questions on your radar.
Welcome, everyone, to another episode here of Weathered Questions, the podcast where we answer the meteorology questions on your radar, bringing us in today.
Myself, meteorologist Kai O'Mara, alongside meteorologist Jan Rieherd, and today we're going to dive into some fun stuff called El Niño.
a little bit later on in the episode, Jan, but for now, I'll tell you, it's been quite the fall across the area.
Earlier this September, we had, I would call it a record heat wave in portions of the state.
It was ridiculously
hot.
Disgusting is what I call it.
Yeah, extremely humid.
We had
a lot of rainfall so far, which is something we'll also get into, but I think we'll jump right in here today.
And we're gonna get back into this concept of
And I'm just going to just blanket this term.
Everybody's got a phone.
I'm just going to say it.
Everybody's got a phone.
And
even as a generalization, it feels pretty safe.
Feels pretty safe at this point.
Feels pretty safe at this point.
Or everybody at least has a way to get information outside of the traditional sources 15 years ago.
So the question here today, why doesn't my weather app
always show that it's raining under current conditions, that little tab there, when in fact it is raining on me.
Why is that?
Actually, I'm gonna do a quick experiment here because it is, as we are recording this, raining for me right now.
And if I pull up my weather app, it says 63 mostly cloudy.
We did not plan this, I swear.
We did not.
We did not plan it this way.
That's fantastic.
But what's going on there?
I don't know what weather app everybody uses, and there are plenty out there.
So they do function differently.
But in general, how weather apps work in that part of the top or the main screen that you're probably looking at when you say, what's the temperature outside?
That is powered by what is called an ASOS weather station, generally.
And so that is publicly available data, again, from the National Weather Service, from a network of weather stations across the country that brings in data generally every hour.
There are plenty of stations that do operate and update more frequently, but the way that those updates come in
and push out to something like a weather app is generally going to be less frequent than all of the actual data that is recorded.
So maybe your weather station has every five minute updates.
And so you have a record going back every five minutes of what the temperature is.
But when it's actually getting pushed to your weather app is probably going to be, for example, when I'm looking at what we're dealing with right now,
755 or 855 it's usually just before the hour that it gets updated so that quote-unquote eight o'clock temperature is usually a 755 temperature or that nine o'clock temperature is generally a 855 temperature.
So why is it raining for us here as we're approaching the next hour but it says that it's mostly cloudy?
Well because
less than an hour ago, it was mostly cloudy.
It was not actively raining.
And so that data, while it is only an hour old, is old.
That's just the nature of it.
So that's generally what happens.
Again, there are plenty of weather apps that will update more frequently.
There are plenty of weather apps that will do something called interpolating that basically says like, well, the temperature at,
this time, you know, the most recent update I got was this temperature.
I'm expecting it, I being the weather app in the model, I'm expecting it to be, you know, five degrees warmer the next hour.
And so there are some that will kind of update that temperature based on where you're expecting to be and kind of fluctuate.
But that can be a dangerous thing and that can be why
why weather apps seem to change around so much and why the forecast isn't consistent is because it's doing that interpolating.
It's not taking actual data.
And so it kind of bounces around a little bit more as well.
So hopefully that made sense.
The summary of all of that to say, why doesn't my weather app always show what is happening actually outside when I look at it?
It's generally because that data is
You know half an hour or 45 minutes old and so it's telling you what happened half an hour or 45 minutes ago
Yep, and it's bouncing through how many servers to get to your digital device.
Oh, yeah
gets decoded and moved and It could be coming from as you said, it's likely coming from an airport But maybe somebody's personal weather station is linked into that one too The best current condition is to just look out the window There's a really good chance that the radar on your phone is fairly
close like probably within two or three minutes most likely you'd have to look at the timestamp combination of radar and looking out your window is going to be a nice tool I mean let's not overthink it here you know if you need the digital device to tell you that it's raining out when it's clearly raining outside um you're becoming a little too dependent on that thing um and looking out the window is definitely going to be your top notch current condition it can't really tell you the weather six hours from now but it can tell you what's going on immediately
And yeah, we get that question a lot.
We had a lot of TV station to you know, why is my app not showing us?
Well, it's just not I'm sorry like it's just Jan Jan outlined very much the reasons why that's the case and We're not ever gonna get to instant instant situation like that, but it'll eventually get get faster probably but even then
but that also takes more computing power and more more resources and stuff and if yep
I don't know that that's where we need to spend our energy.
No, especially when we as humans who grew up in the wild can look out the darn window.
It's not that hard.
It's really not.
I enjoy doing it, actually.
It's healthy for you.
Get
up, take a two-minute walk, go check out the window.
Yeah, very healthy.
All right.
Well, we have a couple of fall questions here in the queue.
This one actually is something that I got to experience recently, an all-brown woolly bear caterpillar.
And basically, there's a couple other people around when we found this and asking, so what does that mean?
All-brown, right?
A lot of people are familiar with the woolly bear and the brown and the black bands that they have.
there's some folklore around, you know, if there's more brown or more black, what that means for winter.
Key thing to keep in mind here is that folklore, as powerful as the mighty woolly bear caterpillar is, I'm sorry, but they do not have the entire power to influence the seasons and the climate for us, but it is still kind of some fun folklore that we can look at.
So what does this all brown woolly bear caterpillar mean?
Well, I had to do some research because, again, folklore, right?
I learned something, though, Kai.
I was very excited about this.
Did you know?
What did you
find?
Did you know that as a woolly bear caterpillar, as they get older, as they mature, they actually molt their black hairs out and become more brown.
So basically, what we found is just an old caterpillar.
You found an old guy.
That's what you found.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So he's been through a lot.
Exactly.
So that's that's what it means is is that that we found an old caterpillar.
That's all it means.
Now, if you want to listen to the folklore, again, not scientifically backs, all brown would mean very mild.
The more black means harsher winter, you know, more snow.
But again.
the science of it is that the caterpillar is old.
That is the science of the woolly bear caterpillar.
Okay.
So believe what you may, but I thought that was very interesting because I had never known that that they they molt their black fur hair.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Well, that's good stuff.
And and put that in the back of your mind because in about seven or 10 minutes from now, it could come in handy.
that could come
in handy.
That's true.
What
about this?
So this hopefully is a little more predictable, but we'll see.
What about this, Jan?
Fall colors.
We have some really beautiful colors in the Midwest and later September through October is peak time.
So we've had a lot of rain.
A lot of places have had a lot of rain.
What should we expect fall colors wise this year with all the rain we've had?
Is there any insight on that at all?
Yeah.
So this fall colors is always, everyone's very interested by fall colors.
And I think the precursor to this conversation is it's only mid-September.
There is still plenty of time for things to change.
And that again, these are all very generic things of like, in the past, when this has happened, this is what tends to happen.
In general, fall, wet, it's been a wet year, right?
But a wet fall will tend to mean
not great things for fall colors.
It will tend to dull the colors.
It will tend to, you know, wind and rain will knock the leaves off faster.
So that doesn't bode well.
If we have a continued wet fall, a wet growing season, well, trees are plants and plants like water.
So a wet growing season actually can mean it would be a good thing.
The overarching theme of this is, yes, it's been a wet year, but we're only just getting into fall.
And so really what depends is what we get over the next couple of weeks and how things are going to, as those leaves start transitioning, what things look like.
So I think that's the easiest synopsis of it.
Yeah, I would agree with that.
If we go into a severe, sudden, dry spell,
you know, that might affect things a little bit.
If we have a bunch of wind events, that could
affect
things a little bit.
So it's kind of a too close to call situation.
It would be nice though if October could dry a little bit compared to what we've had this month.
I mean, there's going to be parts of Iowa this month that may exceed a foot of rain just as a monthly total.
And that even in June is double the average.
So it's been an incredibly wet September.
So
You know, we'll just have to see how everything responds in October, but if it can dry out a little that'd be nice Something along those lines would be nice
All right, let's get into it we're gonna talk El Nino we're gonna we're gonna lead into this Little reminder of what actually is El Nino I think a lot of people have heard about El Nino and La Nina and in those terms, but we need to be reminded sometimes of what that actually means
So today's trivia question, we're putting you on the spot.
That's exactly what it is.
And El Nino is marked by, and this is multiple choice, warming of ocean surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, warming of ocean surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Atlantic Ocean, or cooling of ocean surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific.
or cooling of ocean surface temperatures in the central and eastern Atlantic.
So the overarching theme of the question is, is El Nino marked by warming or cooling temperatures?
And is it the Atlantic or the Pacific Ocean that is the driver of El Nino?
We'll give you a little bit to think about that.
We'll be back in a second.
We'll unpack it all, I promise.
This one's a little more complex than normal.
But it's going to be helpful for our discussion.
So we'll be back in just a second.
All right, let's get into these options here, Jan.
And I think you simplified it and summed it up very nice there at the end.
Which basin is it?
And is it warming or cooling?
So let's take it one at a time.
First off, for those that said Pacific, you're halfway there.
You're right.
The
basin is right.
It's Pacific.
But now is it warming or is it cooling?
And the answer is warming is warming.
So
It's the warming of these temperatures in the tropical Pacific, eastern tropical Pacific.
And I have heard so many different conversations about this.
And you can't, if it storms in your area, that's not El Nino.
If it is windy in your area, that's not El Nino.
All El Niño is is a naturally occurring Oscillation of whether you're warmer than normal at the ocean waters or whether you're cooler than normal and you know how That can change Jan if we want it to You just up well the water You
just turn
the water over and that's what the weather patterns do in those areas About every three or four years you'll see an oscillation
And it goes to a La Nina year and it goes back to an El Nino year and it goes back and forth and back and forth the interesting part about this one is It does look like the warming is by more than two degrees Celsius Which is 3.6 Fahrenheit?
So yeah, it's a little warmer there a little warmer there and as a result I can knock the jet stream out of alignment a little bit it moves things around a little bit so
That is, I think, the most important driver.
El Nino isn't a storm.
It is not a wind.
It is not a flood.
It
is
just warmer water.
That's what it is.
And it's important to
understand
that foundation before we start
making
claims going forward.
And I think the other part of that foundation is that oscillation part, right?
So oscillation, it bounces back and forth every couple of years.
It's not a.
every two years or every five years.
every two to five years, right?
It's a general kind of bounces back and forth kind of thing where you'll get those years of those warmer waters and then you'll get those years where you get the cooler and that's when you get the La Nina, right?
The opposite side of it.
So it is something that fluctuates and it's been happening for a very long time.
This is not a new thing.
This is not a recent development.
This is not
directly, this is not specifically tied to climate change or anything.
This just happens and this is why our weather is influenced in the way that it is.
So we can move into a little bit more than of why or what that means, I guess, for our weather.
So one of the things that we look at as meteorologists
It's called the CPC Outlooks Climate Prediction Center.
We've talked about these before on the podcast.
And we like to look at these.
These are very well done outlooks that the Climate Prediction Center will put together.
And they will help us look further into the future than just the traditional seven day, 10 day forecast.
As meteorologists, we excel at the short term, excuse me, as climatologists, they look a little bit farther out.
So looking at, for instance, the one month or three month outlooks, we can see that they are expecting above average temperatures across a large portion of the United States.
We can also see that precipitation wise, there's a couple of bubbles of some
wetter precipitation areas especially in the next month or so along the west coast and then as we look over the next couple of months into kind of more that desert southwest as well as the far southeastern parts of the country.
So we can look at those things and they are looking at many different things but
El Nino is one of the things that is influencing those rain chances and those temperature fluctuations and why it might be warmer than normal or cooler than normal
Yep, and then they'll they'll use large scale
What they call teleconnections to put these outlooks together and there could be some Arctic Oscillation going on there could be other anomalies in the world going on But the bottom line is those impacts have been researched over time To figure out all right, you know nine times out of ten This part of the world is drier than normal if this pocket of the ocean is warmer than normal or the opposite happens
It doesn't always work that way.
Sometimes if you have several oscillations working in tandem, they actually get kind of weird.
Sometimes some are stronger, more confident than the others.
There are a couple of local tricks that I have found that work pretty well, and we look up towards Alaska.
And if Alaska is warmer than normal, we're usually cooler than normal, or the opposite happens.
But in this particular case, when we look ahead at an El Nino type of situation,
It's like the branches of the jet stream are split off and so it leaves most of the country You know without a whole lot of Arctic air now we can still get really tremendous Storms to come in and still some weird stuff.
It doesn't doesn't ever mean it's a snow-free situation But what it does do and and where I think this helps is You know if you're if you're trying to budget for snow removal for example
If you're a business, you're trying to figure out how much am I going to have to spend on snow removal this year?
If it's a El Nino winter, you might want to go a little bit higher.
Maybe not, but maybe you probably should just because historically they go a little higher.
El Nino winters though tend to be lower and, and markedly so.
And so, you know, one of our big ones was back in 1998 where we just, I seem to remember that one where it barely snowed at all.
2015 and 16, we actually had a flood event in December due to just some mild temperatures and heavy rain.
That also didn't feature a whole lot of snow in general, but I believe that following January or February, we had a substantial winter storm in the Midwest.
So it's not like it's just turn the heat on and leave it on, but there are things with these patterns.
And you'll notice that
The outlook you just described, Jan, does not have, you know, super-duper high probabilities in either direction.
They're just there.
And so what's really important to realize is El Ninos happened before.
It'll happen again.
What's happened before isn't a guarantee that it'll happen again, but we've just seen this story over and over and over again.
And so as a result, it's logical.
to think that it could be similarly behaved where we might go this winter with a little less severity.
So we'll see.
We'll see.
Something that always sticks out to me, though, in these events lately, it seems wherever, whatever phase we're in, it seems like winter has a slow start and it is painfully slow to leave.
It's like April lately has just the last five April's awful.
Just awful.
I mean,
cold seems to be the new normal.
Yeah.
And that it doesn't matter what phase you're in in a tropical sense.
So those are just some things to keep in mind.
Sometimes you'll hear from people that, you know, why do we even try and formulate trends for the next 30 days if we miss the timing of a thunderstorm by two hours?
Those are just totally different things to look at.
That's like going to the doctor for a cut on your arm.
And then also because of that cut, you want the doctor to now give you a life expectancy.
It's like it's something totally different.
You're
doing, you don't do
blood work.
You don't do blood work when you go in and get stitches, okay?
That's not what happens.
Those are two totally separate arenas.
And one is a short term, figure it out.
The other is a long term trend, figure it out.
So those are just some nice differences.
And that's actually, you know, a key difference between weather and climate.
If you want to think about weather and climate that way, you know, El Nino is definitely a climate aspect.
It is not a day to day weather aspect.
So we'll just have to see.
Let's see.
The bottom line is you're going to see a lot of scary maps and graphics.
And I'm just telling you in the Midwest, I just seems like it's going to be one where the sleds aren't out as much as they as they could be or should be.
That's how I'm going to tie that all together.
And the rest of it, whatever.
Chances are higher for a brown Christmas than in other... Which
is nothing new, by the way.
No.
My kids have only seen a white Christmas twice, maybe.
That's wild.
And yeah.
And I mean, the last couple years, it's just, we just struggle to get good snow, but then it seems as soon as we get past that.
It's almost like it's January through March is kind of the new winter three months
You know
and then April even getting good heat in June has been a struggle We get some but we don't really get into the real stifling stuff now till July and August especially as we saw this year So it's all interesting to see how it all interconnects like that
And one last thing that I'll throw into this conversation, as we talked about, like warmer than normal, cooler than normal, wetter than normal, all of that, again, with the climate versus weather concept, that doesn't mean if we're looking at a warmer than normal winter, it doesn't mean it won't be cold.
It doesn't mean that we won't have any cold temperatures or any snow or anything that is absolutely not what it means.
We're talking again in a very broad climatological sense of over those three, four, five months that you might think of traditionally as winter air quotes, that it's going to average out warmer than normal.
That's all that means.
It doesn't mean it'll never get below 32.
It doesn't mean it will always be below zero.
That's not what any of it means.
It doesn't mean we won't have, you know, those couple of days in January that we get down to negative 40 one morning.
That's still entirely possible.
And dare I say likely because that is normal.
It just means that overall it will be
On that on one side of normal or the other and this side because of El Niño tends to be warmer than normal slightly Overall.
Yep for snow lovers.
It tends to be a little more frustrating For
those that don't
like snow you tend to like a little bit more
Um, Nino can also be a little bit wetter in the center of the country too.
So, um, we'll see maybe more, maybe more on the, on the rain side versus snow side for some of those systems.
And then you have a hard time building up your snowpack and we'll see, we'll see as we get closer ultimately, because we'll, we'll hopefully be keeping the podcast going well into it.
So,
um, as we
get closer, we'll be able to figure all this out, but.
Um, yeah, for now, for now, I'd say, you know, there's nothing to panic about.
Let's, um, let's enjoy the fall season.
Let's enjoy some, some football and kids doing well in school.
And then the winner will bring what it brings.
That's, that's where I'm
at.
Yeah, I'm with you.
Sounds
very much like
drinking a cup of coffee on the back porch in the morning, but that's not too far off from my life.
Right now,
you know, that works.
We'll get you out to that porch for some coffee here pretty quick, Kai, because we are at the end of another episode.
And more important, looking
at those current
conditions,
Jan.
Outside, man.
You gotta be outside.
Yeah, that's true.
That's true.
Not for me, still raining here.
But that does bring us to the end of another episode.
So we hope you learned something here today.
Maybe it sparked some new ideas and questions and thoughts.
Feel free to drop those in an email and send them to us at weatheredquestions at gmail.com.
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