What do San Diegans need to know ahead of a 'super El Niño'?

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Welcome in San Diego, it's Jade Hindman. On this episode of KPBS Midday Edition, the governor declared a state of emergency ahead of a potentially severe weather from a Super El Nino pattern. What you need to know about preparation and your insurance policy. This is KPBS Midday Edition, connecting our communities through conversation. So yesterday, Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency due to the potential for a very strong or historic strength El Nino event. The declaration will ensure the state has resources to respond to things like flooding, bluff collapse, coastal erosion or landslides. So when could we start to see severe weather here and what's on the horizon for our fall and winter months? I'm joined by Alex Tardy. He's a meteorologist and founder of WeatherEcho. Alex, welcome.

Hey, thanks for having me on again.

Glad to have you here. Also with us is Dan Kahan. He's a climate science researcher with Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. Dan, welcome to Midday Edition.

Hi, thanks.

So Alex, first off, what does this state of emergency declaration by the governor signal to you?

Well, I remember back in 2015 when we were talking about a very strong El Nino developing that a similar proclamation was made. Most of the time, my understanding with weather is emergencies are declared after the fact, you know, with wildfires, with flooding, with windstorms. But in this case, because there is increasing confidence that precipitation is going to be more than usual or maybe even excessive because of the magnitude of this El Nino. Getting it done, I think, clears the way to making sure the funds and the resources are available.

So, Dan, what do we know about El Nino? Is it all but a certainty, you know, we'll see impacts this fall and winter?

I'm sure Alex would agree that there's no certainties, but this is a really strong event. We just crossed three degrees Celsius threshold in the central equatorial Pacific, which puts this on par with the very strongest event historically that's been observed. We don't have a lot of these cases to draw really firm statistical likelihoods, but a couple of our very strong previous El Ninos have had pretty wet and stormy impacts in the coast of California, Southern California in particular. There's coastal hazards as well as the perhaps copious rainfall.

I mean, it's the first day of fall. When might we expect to even see some of these systems or weather patterns?

Again, this depends on weather, not only upon climate, but probably within a month or so, the window is going to start to open. But I'll remind that in In 1997-98, we waited quite a while for the first symptoms of that very strong El Nino to appear. It was really later on in January. So this is... one of those uncertainties that we don't have a lot of confidence about.

And Alex, I mean, this is also one of those things that's obviously drawn a lot of concern. So what do you think state