‘Tf you’re looking for something to call it. =
in polite company, try ‘El Nino’

ee F.. people to talk about the weather incessantly is nothing
..- wnusual in this climate, but the winter of 1991-92 has stood out as being

bizarre beyond the memory of many oldtimers. Mild, damp, with the sun

- vanishing for weeks on end, it has struck many as the first clammy blatt of

Gabriel’s trumpet, an indicator of some irreversible atmospheric trend on a
global scale.

While the people of the Northwest have met the trend with alternating
relief at the absence of severe temperatures and annoyance at the cloud
cover and rain that did away with the sun, other parts of the world are
getting far worse: record flooding in the Mediterranean, drought in
Australia, murderous winter storms on the easi coast of North America. It
is global, and it stems from a single phenomenon.

El Nifio.

In normal years, explains UBC climatologist Dr. Philip Austin, a regular
wind starts blowing from the equator southward toward Antarctica in the
fall, That wind picks up warmth and moisture from the surface of the deep
ocean off the west coast of South America. Eventually the warm water is
replaced by up-welling cold water.

~The wind then becomes cool and finds its way up into the jet stream, a
huge global current of air that blows through an irregularly-shaped but
constant pattern in the upper atmosphere. The jet stream goes around the
world, and we're on (or rather, below) its itinerary.

In an El Nifio year, Austin says, that southerly wind from the equator,
for some reason no one understands, just doesn’t blow. The warm water on

Terrace Review — March 6, 1992