El Nino vs. Blob: An icy, warm winter is coming

Sudburians sad to see summer wind down take heart: There's a good chance this winter will be one of the warmest we've had in a long time.

Super El Nino versus the Pacific Blob may sound like a B-movie, but the competing weather systems could combine to make the heart of winter – November to March – an average of four or five degrees warmer than it was last year in Sudbury.

David Phillips, senior climatologist with Environment Canada, said the El Nino system affecting weather this year is a big one – the biggest since 1997-1998, when there was rain in January and spring arrived in March.

While a normal El Nino can affect ocean temperatures by half a degree, the current Super El Nino is warming the ocean water by two or three degrees.

"It's like a hot tub out there,” Phillips said this week, from his home in Barrie. “And the area of warmer water is fairly large. We're talking about something two or three times the size of Canada. It is a force. And unlike the weather, it doesn't go away."

During the last Super El Nino, the city got 175 cm of snow, compared to more than 300 cm we got last winter. The average temperature in Sudbury from November to March is normally -8.1 degrees. Last year, it was a chilly -10.8. With El Nino, that average could rise to -6.1 or higher this winter, a significant improvement over last year.

"It's not as though you won't be doing any plowing or snow shovelling," Phillips said. "But the storms may not be as intense, perhaps, or you may get more rain."

So you can expect to save money on home heating bills, but winter carnivals and other cold weather events should be OK.

"We're not talking about Miami of the North, but temperatures could be one, two, 2 1/2 degrees warmer than normal ... There will probably be a January thaw, March will likely be more spring-like than winter-like."

While less famous (and more hilariously named), the Pacific Blob has been around since 2013 and its effects are expected to continue for several months before they disappear. The Blob is a massive pool of warm water in the Pacific Ocean located off the North American coastline.

While it's largely responsible for the fact 2015 was the warmest year on record, Phillips said it's also responsible for the frigid winter we had last year in the eastern part of North America.

That's because as it moved east in 2015, it petered out around Manitoba, allowing cold Arctic air “to do an end run and come over the eastern half of the continent,” Phillips said.

"So from Timmins to Toronto to Tallahassee, you had the coldest winter on record. And yet the world went through its warmest winter on record."

What does that mean for this winter? No one knows for sure, Phillips said, because this sort of weather pattern has not been seen since they started keeping detailed weather records. But there are some likely scenarios. One possibility is the two warm air masses combine to give Sudbury one heck of a balmy winter.

"Will El Nino tag team with the Pacific Blob and give us something that maybe cancels winter? You can't rule that out," he said. "Or will they duke it out, and one cancels the other out, and so you end up with a normal winter? It's a bit of a wild card. We've just never had that sort of combination before."

Since 1950, Phillips said world has had six Super El Ninos, and all six led to milder winters than normal. And the Blob is weakening now, so climatologists are predicting El Nino will be the dominant force.

"So that it gives us a pretty good clue about the kind of winter we're going to get,” he said. "You can't say it's definitely going to be that way, but boy, it gives you a lot of confidence that it's going to be a milder than normal winter."

The prospect of milder temperatures, however, comes with a significant fly in the ointment: increased likelihood of freezing rain. Phillips said when most winter days are around -10, any precipitation is going to be snow. But if it warms up closer to the freezing mark, things can get icy.

“It's a real concern,” he said, recalling that the last Super El Nino was the year of the infamous Montreal Ice Storm in 1998, where freezing rain caused widespread power outages and damage to trees.

“The weather conditions (to create freezing rain) may be more prevalent.”

But of one thing he is certain: winter 2015-2016 will be one of the warmest we've had in a long time.

“That's is like saying tonight is going to be dark and tomorrow is going to be light," Phillips said. "It's not going to be as tough as the last two winters."