If the weather in Houston has felt odd to you over the last few months, you’re not alone. Much of the southern part of the United States, especially Houston, have been experiencing the weather phenomenon known as El Niño.
El Niño happens every few years, and it can bring unusual weather to the southernmost states in the U.S, especially the wet and cloudy pattern that Houston has been in for the past few months. If you’ve noticed the very hot summers and cool and wet winters around Houston, El Niño has something to do with it.
According to KPRC Chief Meteorologist Frank Billingsley, he thinks it’s a pretty safe bet that El Niño will be on its way out by late spring. In fact, here is a link to his most recent blog talking about when Houston will transition out of our current El Niño pattern.
There is also an opposite to El Niño, and it’s called La Niña, and the two can get a little confusing if you don’t know the difference.
El Niño, what we are currently experiencing, happens when there is a warming of the eastern Pacific waters which warms the air above it. It explains why the summer of 2023 was so hot, as well as a drier winter across much of the northern tier of the United States. If you have any friends or family who lives in northern states, they can tell you how mild the winter has been.
On the upside, El Niño usually keeps hurricanes away from the Gulf of Mexico, which explains why summer of 2023 was a generally mild hurricane season. Even though there were a number of storms that did form, landfalling storms for the US were on the lower end of the tropical scale for our season.
La Niña, on the other hand, is basically just the opposite of El Niño.
During La Niña, the eastern Pacific waters are colder, which then makes the air cooler in places like the Pacific Northwest. For us in Houston, a La Niña year could mean a drier than usual year. It can also lead to a more intense hurricane season.
The transition from El Niño to La Niña will be happening during the summer, so it will be harder to predict when we will feel the effects of each of these weather phenomenon. The KPRC2 Stormtracker team will always be watching for indicators of change when we do finally flip back into a La Niña pattern and what that may mean for our upcoming hurricane season this summer.