An El Niño is building, forecasters say.
And, while most of Utah is unlikely to see the impacts, southern Utah has a better-than-usual chance of a wet year next year, said Larry Dunn, meteorologist-in-charge at the National Weather Service's Salt Lake City office.
"If I was a water manager in southern Utah," he said, "I'd be paying attention. This is a wet signal for southern Utah."
Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have been on the lookout for the El Niño weather pattern.
On Thursday, they announced El Niño has arrived, bringing a higher likelihood of storminess to the southern United States.
The pattern, which influences global weather, oceans and fisheries, is expected to build through the fall and last through spring.
Usually occurring every two to five years, El Niños signal the warming of waters in the central and eastern tropics.
"Advanced climate science allows us to alert industries, governments and emergency managers about the weather conditions El Niño may bring so these can be factored into decision-making and, ultimately, protect life, property and the economy," said Jane Lubchenco, NOAA's administrator.
Dunn noted the latest data are not definitive on whether the weather pattern will be strong.
When it comes to El Niños, Utah is divided, he said. The south is likely to be affected, while the north is likely to be unaffected.
Utahns might see news reports about El Niños bringing storminess to much of the nation. But there's little evidence to suggest that the Greatest Snow on Earth could be even greater this winter, said Dunn. "We have months to wait to see how it goes," he said.
Past experience does suggest, however, that southern Utah has greater odds of seeing a wet year, and that could translate into better grasslands, higher reservoirs and lower fire hazards next summer.
For Mark Jones, who works on a 1,400-acre alfalfa farm in Iron County, this year's mild El Nino has been a blessing, keeping things cool and moist enough to harvest. He would be pleased to see a stronger El Niño settle in for next year to help recharge aquifers and reservoirs, since the region has been dealing with a long drought.
"If it gets wetter," he said, "naturally, that's gonna help us."
Dunn noted that the El Niño forecast for 1997-98 helped Californians, in particular, prepare for the stormy weather. "But we have never been able to repeat that success" in forecasting an El Niño's impacts.
NOAA said Thursday that some effects of El Niños are positive, helping suppress Atlantic hurricane activity, bringing more wintertime water to the arid Southwest, making northern winters milder and making Florida wildfires less likely.
On the negative side, El Niños have caused severe flooding and mudslides in Central and South America, drought in Indonesia and severe storms in California.
A phenomenon known as El Niño -- a warming of the equatorial waters of the Pacific Ocean -- is building and likely will last into the winter, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced on Thursday.
Utah impact » Moderate to strong El Niños have featured near- normal precipitation in northern Utah and above-normal precipitation in the south.
In 1982-83 » Above normal precipitation (up 2 to 3 inches) was observed over the entire state during November-March.
For more on the latest El Niño forecast see: www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.html. And here is NOAA's El Niño site: www.elNino.noaa.gov
