Super El Nino

Go Wolves !!
Go Bison !!
Go Ticks !!
Go Otters !!
Go El Nino !!

😁
 
RRSmith said:
Stories like the one in the Washington Post are the kind that's driving meteorologists and climatologists crazy. Within the group I am a part of, there have been several discussion threads about how the media is treating (hyping) this event. The group felt that the article by Bob Henson (link at the top) is probably the most accurate summary to date.

Below is a copy/paste of a comment by Dr John Monteverdi (retired meteorology professor - San Francisco State) who is one of the site administrators who sums up the frustration:

Imagine a well-informed person reading the Washington Post article on the upcoming warm ENSO event. That person would see this graphic that is mostly unexplained, except by the heading "Super El Niño" and the two indicated years. They would think they were now informed about the comparison between the consensus forecast and some extreme event in the 19th century. However, that person would not know that 19th century sea surface temperature anomalies were obtained by estimate using the (literally) bucket measurements of ocean temperatures. Those measurements were not standardized by depth or instrument. It's not that those estimates are without value, but they should be used as an indication not a firm estimate of the values. That person would not know that not only was the 2026 pattern shown here is not a firm deterministic forecast, but one of the most extreme solutions from a model that has been shown to overestimate SST temperatures. Finally, the article has the feeling of "truth" and capturing the pulse of the professional opinions on the upcoming event. That person would not realize that not even the term "Super El Niño" exists as a real term. Perhaps in the future, but not yet. That future may bring us a pattern that is close to the most extreme solution, but it certainly is not the consensus solution as of May 14, 2026.

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GONNA HAVE TO STAND UP BIG GAINST THIS NINO!!!!
 
Matt B said:
It really messed with the North Sound coho. 2016 was the year of trout-sized coho. Fish on the redds were mostly 16-18” and scrawny things. But they bounced back. Salmon are resilient if we give them a chance.
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Bumping this since the El Niño showed up. NOAA's Oct. 8 update has Niño-3.4 at +2.1°C and gives an 83% chance that Oct-Dec beats every El Niño since 1950.

Matt's point got me looking at steelhead. Coho come back after about 18 months at sea, so 2015 showed up right away. Most winter steelhead spend two or three years out there, so the hit lands later. WDFW's spawner estimates for Snohomish/Skykomish winter steelhead:
  • 2016: 1,312
  • 2018: 372
  • 2019: 385
  • 2024: 1,194
  • 2025: 594
The 2018-19 lows are mostly fish that went to sea in 2015 and 2016. They did bounce back after the cool 2020-22 ocean years, like Matt said. It isn't all ocean, though: in a 2021 study, harbor seals predicted Puget Sound steelhead survival better than any ocean index.

If that pattern holds, this winter's wild fish mostly went to sea in 2024 and 2025, and the El Niño class comes home in 2027-28 and 2028-29. This winter I would expect El Niño to show up as weather: warm storms and more rain than snow, so the same storm can blow out the Sky or Snoqualmie harder. Strong El Niños aren't reliably dry here either; 1982-83 and 2015-16 were both wet in Washington.

I wrote up a river-by-river steelhead outlook for this season, including why I don't trust my model much on run size.

For anyone who fished the coast or the Sky in the 2015-16 winter, how did it fish?
 
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