A rare and unusually intense Super El Niño is taking shape this season, a climate pattern that could make the Northeast feel warmer than usual while keeping snowfall scarce through the fall and winter months.
The potentially disruptive weather event is an amplified form of a typical El Niño, which occurs when waters and air patterns across the Pacific warm beyond normal levels, setting off ripple effects in weather systems around the globe.
This developing El Niño is expected to push temperatures above seasonal averages across the region in the months ahead. At the same time, rain, snow and other forms of precipitation are projected to trend below normal, particularly early in the season, AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Carl Erickson said.
“Warmth may linger through September, brief shots of cooler air should arrive in October,” Erickson told The Post on Sunday.
“El Niño is expected to play a greater role in the overall weather pattern by late fall and winter.
“Some snow is possible by late October or November if a storm happens to coincide with enough cold air. But it is too early to predict any specific event,” he said.
Once winter fully settles, some forecasts call for a still warm but then wetter season, with El Nino sometimes bringing elevated precipitation to the Atlantic Coast during the winter.
New York currently faces a roughly 50% to 60% chance of seeing higher than average precipitation between December and February, while its chance of higher than average temperatures during the same period are about 40% to 50%, according to CNN Weather.
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That means snow-loving New Yorkers may have their hopes dashed — and have to settle for a winter of rain and sleet instead of drifts of white stuff.
All of that is all the more likely to occur if the weather pattern becomes a Super El Nino, an extremely strong manifestation of the phenomenon, which would likely come to fruition by October.
El Ninos themselves are not unique phenomena — they happen every few years when temperatures across the Pacific equatorial region surge above average.
Those regions of warm air spark chain reactions which shift jet streams and seasonal weather expectations across the globe.
In the US, that typically means the Southeast experiences wetter and colder winters with more storms, while swaths of the Midwest becoming dryer and northern states see warmer temperatures.
The East Coast tends to have less predictable weather, though higher rain and coastal storms flowing up from the South are often expected, according to the American Geosciences Institute.
This year’s El Nino is shaping up to be one of the strongest on record — with there currently about a 70% chance of it becoming a Super El Nino.
New York City has already been swimming its way through a particularly wet August, with more than 8 inches of raining falling so far and making it the wettest August in five years.
The last time New York saw as much rain was in 2021 when more than 10 inches fell.