Storms and Floods

Tropical Storms

In the Southern Indian Ocean:

Tropical cyclone Ivanoe is located approximately 1664 nm south-southeast of Diego Garcia. The final advisory has been issued on this system.

Tropical cyclone Ita is located approximately 525 nm east-northeast of Cairns, Australia.

In the Western Pacific:

Tropical depression Peipah is located approximately 61 nm west of Koror, Palau.

Philippines - Domeng is coming. Tropical storm Domeng (international name: Peipah), the fourth storm to hit the country this year, is also the also the fourth to hit Mindanao, showing a weather pattern that has changed from only six typhoons making landfall in Mindanao from 1996 to 2010 to nine typhoons in 28 months since Typhoon Sendong in December 2011.

NewsBytes:

Canada - Flooded Prince Edward Island homes, businesses cope with melting snow. This year's snow amounts have been exceptional, leading to flooding.

Solomon Islands - The devastating flooding in the Solomon Islands has now claimed the lives of at least 21 people, left 40 missing and made up to 49,000 homeless.

El Niño

Record warm subsurface Pacific waters may Bring Moderate to Strong El Niño Event. There have been tremendous changes in the Pacific Ocean over the past two months which continue to favour a moderate to strong El Niño event later this spring and summer.

To begin, we are currently observing what looks to be The strongest downwelling oceanic Kelvin wave event since satellite records began in the 1970s. This still needs to be verified in reanalysis, but a large swath of 6°C (11°F) ocean temperature anomalies at a depth of 100 - 200 meters clearly illustrate the significance of this event. Oceanic Kelvin waves travel only from west to east at extremely slow speeds (2-3 m/s). These waves have been alluded to as the facilitators of El Niño.

There are two phases of an oceanic Kelvin wave, the “Upwelling” phase and the “Downwelling” phase. The Upwelling phase of an oceanic Kelvin wave pushes colder water from the sub-surface towards the surface, resulting in cooling at the surface. The Downwelling phase is the opposite, where warmer waters at the surface of the West Pacific warm pool are forced to sink, resulting a deepening of the thermocline and net warming in the sub-surface.

The entire West Pacific Warm Pool has begun to shift eastward, and there is a large adjustment in the Pacific Ocean currently underway. That being said, we still need to see some favourable atmospheric forcing this month to continue the forward advancement of a full-basin El Niño. In particular, west-to-east blowing winds along the Equator are needed to keep pushing warm water eastwards towards South America.