By Amy Z
Today is December 20th. Almost two-thirds of the way through December, it is just just two days away from the Winter Solstice, the shortest day in the year, and the first day of winter.
As I write, the wind howls against my window, clanking against the smooth glass panes, and flurries of perfect white crystals coat the boughs of the fir tree outside. It is a cold, brutal night, and I am glad that I am safe in my warmly lit room with my cup of coffee at my side. It’s the scene of a perfect winter night—except for the fact that it’s not.
Other than for the date, it is all a lie. When I look out my window, all I can see is dark chartreuse grass, drained of life and yet still uncovered by the glittering blanket of snow we have come to expect from this time of year. Instead of having been ten degrees below freezing, the several weeks have been consistently in the 60s—a temperature range we associate with spring or fall, not winter, and definitely not December.
As I am writing, we have not received a single inch of snow, and the chance of us having snow before Christmas is quickly going down. In fact, it was only two days ago that Buffalo, a place we associate largely with snow had their first snowfall, breaking their record for longest time into December without snow since 1899, in which they got their first snow on December 3rd. But why are our temperatures so high, even though back in October, we were preparing for what was predicted to be a “bad winter?” The answer is an annoying little fluke of weather: El Niño.
An El Niño occurs when the trade winds which usually blow warm water into the western equatorial Pacific near Australia weaken, and sometimes reverse. As a result, the warm water flows back into the Eastern Pacific near the east coast of South America. These occur irregularly every 2 to 7 years with varying degrees of strength, and this year saw one of the strongest, thus accounting for the particularly noticeable changes in temperature. In fact, the last time the world saw an El Niño with this size, it was 1997.
For the U.S., this means that the south will be cooler than average, as well as wetter, while the north will be warmer, with the northwest being drier. This is good news for California, as the rain that is connected with El Niños in that area will be able to alleviate a little bit of the drought. But in similarly powerful El Niños in the past, the heavy rains have also been connected with less welcomed events such as landslides, mudslides, and floods.
On a global level, the El Niño has been causing damage to many areas, and if we are to compare its magnitude to the one of ‘97, we may see similar catastrophic results: 21,000 deaths and $36 billion in damages. As of now, the El Niño has caused a drought in Africa and the continent is now experiencing a food shortage which has led to a projected 18 million people who will require food assistance in the coming months. Similar droughts have caused extensive forest fires in Indonesia and Papua New-Guinea, along with another food shortage in Central American countries with 3.9 million people requiring food aid. The fluctuating temperatures of the water have also led fish populations to disperse from their usual grounds; this understandably has crippled the fish industry in many areas such as the west coast of North and South America where the warmer water of El Niño provides less nutrients to the fish. The salmon population of Washington and Oregon have dwindled along with the squid population of California. The anchovy population of Peru has decreased as the anchovies have all moved north to cooler waters. Ski resorts, particularly in the New England area, too are concerned at the weather conditions because most of their profit comes from the Holiday Break season, and as mentioned previously, there has been a significant lack of snow. And there’s little promise of it before the holidays.
As for me, I’m going to go off to dream of a White Christmas. By the time you read this, hopefully our school will have seen at least a little bit of the white crystalline ice crystals that we long for so much, because if we’re to be honest, we really need those snow days and two hour delays.