{"id":40258,"date":"2015-05-19T09:40:54","date_gmt":"2015-05-19T14:40:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=40258"},"modified":"2015-05-19T09:40:54","modified_gmt":"2015-05-19T14:40:54","slug":"a-strange-el-nino-is-bringing-rain-to-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2015\/05\/19\/a-strange-el-nino-is-bringing-rain-to-texas\/","title":{"rendered":"A Strange El Ni\u00f1o Is Bringing Rain To Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mkSRUf02gu8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\nWhen you hear about El Ni\u00f1o, you might remember the classic skit where Chris Farley plays\u00a0&#8220;El Ni\u00f1o,&#8221; a pro-wrestling tropical storm.<\/p>\n<p>What other weather pattern gets its own Saturday Night Live send-up?<\/p>\n<p>Well, after a year of\u00a0waiting, El Ni\u00f1o\u00a0is here, and it is raging like Farley. But it\u2019s it&#8217;s not like anything we\u2019ve seen before. To understand why, we&#8217;ve got to clear up some misconceptions.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/206067924&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false\" height=\"166\" width=\"100%\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n<!--more-->First off, in the sketch Farley says El Ni\u00f1o is a &#8220;tropical storm.&#8221; It&#8217;s not. It&#8217;s a weather pattern that brings storms. That&#8217;s what it\u2019s been doing this month in Texas \u2014 a lot.<\/p>\n<p>Secondly, the name carries a little more meaning than Farley would have you believe.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEl Ni\u00f1o was named after the Christ child, because it was first observed by Peruvian fisherman around Christmastime,&#8221;\u00a0says\u00a0Texas State Climatologist\u00a0<a style=\"font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;\" href=\"http:\/\/climatexas.tamu.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\">John Neilsen Gammon<\/a>.\u00a0&#8220;The water temperatures would warm up and it would have big impacts on rain.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s what makes this El Ni\u00f1o a strange one.\u00a0Christmas is long gone.\u00a0El Ni\u00f1o is not.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Usually this time of year we don\u2019t have much effect from El Nino,\u201d says Neilsen Gammon.<\/p>\n<p>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration meteorologist Victor Murphy says Austin\u2019s received 8.97 inches through May 17, compared to 7.09 inches of rainfall in the entire month of May last year.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_40274\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 300px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-40274\" alt=\"Chris Farley in his classic turn as &quot;El Nino&quot;\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2015\/05\/EL-NINO-FARLEY-300x186.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"186\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2015\/05\/EL-NINO-FARLEY-300x186.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2015\/05\/EL-NINO-FARLEY.jpg 496w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Screen grab from Youtube<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chris Farley in his classic turn as &quot;El Nino&quot;<\/p><\/div>\n<p>He says the rains will likely continue through the end of the month \u2014 he expects anywhere from two to four inches at least by the end of this week \u2014 which could break the record for the wettest May on record in Austin.<\/p>\n<p>Neilsen Gammon says the unseasonable system doesn\u2019t have a definite finish line.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t have a good feel for when we\u2019ll stop getting a big influence,\u201d he says. \u201cBecause really this sort of situation hasn\u2019t really happened a whole lot in history.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He says, with luck, we could get a repeat of 1957, the year when heavy rains in both spring and fall ended the great Texas drought of the 1950s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When you hear about El Ni\u00f1o, you might remember the classic skit where Chris Farley plays\u00a0&#8220;El Ni\u00f1o,&#8221; a pro-wrestling tropical storm. What other weather pattern gets its own Saturday Night Live send-up? Well, after a year of\u00a0waiting, El Ni\u00f1o\u00a0is here, and it is raging like Farley. But it\u2019s it&#8217;s not like anything we\u2019ve seen before. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[58],"tags":[386],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40258"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40258"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40281,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40258\/revisions\/40281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}