Emergency management officials suggest people have a “go” bag ready in case of weather emergencies. It should contain the following:
1. water
2. snacks
3. toiletries
4. cell phone power cords
5. medicines
6. list of family contacts
7. clothing for a few days
8. food and bowls for your animals
9. a few toys to occupy the kids
El Niño, the climate pattern that was expected to make this a cooler, wetter winter, has taken on a more sinister edge.
Weather experts now worry it could cause flooding, heavy thunderstorms, tornadoes and hail through the winter and spring in Georgia. Flooding is the main worry, considering the ground is saturated from recent rains.
“I think there’s going to be a big flooding issue as we go through the winter months and even into the spring, with enormous amounts of rainfall,” Glenn Burns, the chief meteorologist with Channel 2 Action News, said during a recent broadcast. “And there’s no place for that water to go.”
El Niños occur every couple of years when the Pacific Ocean warms up around the equator. The climate pattern carries moisture across California, Texas and the Gulf states to our doorstep.
No two El Niño seasons are alike. Some become little more than soggy, gray winters. Others, though, cause trouble. Meteorologists warn this is the strongest El Niño in two decades, and local emergency management officials are bracing for what could be major weather events.
‘We want to be prepared’
The strong desire to be ready follows the blunders surrounding the ice storm dubbed Snowpocalypse in 2014. That January storm caused more than 1,200 wrecks and cast a frozen pall over Atlanta, stranding people in cars for hours.
“We want to be prepared,” said Lauren Curry, chief of staff for the Georgia Emergency Management Agency/Homeland Security. “No one knows for sure what will happen, but we want to be prepared.”
Looking back, some of the worst weather events here had an El Niño pedigree.
The Dunwoody tornado had its roots in a 1998 El Niño. That tornado struck parts of Cobb, Fulton, DeKalb and Gwinnett, but the greatest destruction was in Dunwoody. One person in DeKalb was killed, 3,000 homes were destroyed or seriously damaged, and 60,000 trees were uprooted.
A month earlier, about a dozen people died when a tornado struck Gainesville.
The historic floods of 2009 were also El Niño-related. That resulted in about 10 deaths, 17 counties declaring emergencies from the storm, and swaths of Austell plunged under water.
Then there was the blow-out snowfall of 7.9 inches on March 24, 1982, resulting in Atlanta’s snowiest winter since World War II. El Niño also left its mark in the crippling ice storm of the 1972-73 season, during which some 200,000 people in metro Atlanta were left without power for three days, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Trouble already brewing
El Niño is already here, having dropped heavy rains this fall. This week alone, rain is expected to drench the region and a flood watch has been issued through Christmas morning.
When NOAA first issued its forecast for this winter in mid-October, weather experts explained that El Niño would cause a generally wetter, cooler winter. But by November, after the rains started coming, forecasters started sending out a more dire message.
David Nadler, a meteorologist with the local office of the National Weather Service, said the El Niño forecasts have evolved as the climate pattern exceeded expectations.
“It’s already setting the stage for trouble,” Nadler said. “The ground is already saturated.”
El Niño is a major driver of weather this winter, but not the only one. There’s also the oscillating weather systems that emanate in the Arctic and North Atlantic, which, depending on their strength, can bring colder weather here.
Are El Niños influenced by global warming? Well, don’t ask. Global warming is a politically sensitive topic anyway, and while research continues on its impact on El Niños, no firm answers have emerged. Opinions are all over the proverbial weather map.
“We know global warming is not the cause of it. El Niños have been around for thousands of years,” said Mike Halpert, deputy director of NOAA’s climate prediction center. His opinion: “We haven’t seen a change in character (of El Niños) or more or less of them” due to global warming.
Others suspect we will see more El Niño events in the future due to the warming of the planet.
Tornadoes also a danger
If there is a geographic divide for El Niño in Georgia, it is a greater chance for snow and ice in the north of the state versus more thunderstorms and tornadoes in the south. Atlanta stands about in the middle, but the major concern here remains flooding, said Nadler of the local weather service.
El Niño can also affect tornadoes. It doesn’t increase the chance of those tornadoes that stay on the ground for several miles, called long-track tornadoes. But it can increase the frequency of those tornadoes that stay on the ground for about a quarter mile or so. They have a greater chance of striking in south Georgia and by the coast, Nadler said. Moreover, tornadoes tend to occur during the spring, but El Niño has a history of spawning them in the winter, as well.
The State Department of Transportation and GEMA have implemented numerous measures to handle ice and snow, such as the ability to spread a liquid salt mixture called “brine” on roads to delay freezing. GDOT has also installed pavement sensors to detect temperatures in 15 locations around metro Atlanta, and has obtained 70 new snow plows since 2011, bringing to total fleet to 385 statewide.
Local governments are making sure culverts and drains are clear to help with runoff and drainage. Expecting more rainfall, Cobb County workers are monitoring some 20 storm gauges at vulnerable areas likely to flood the fastest, such as Sweetwater and Noses creeks.
In DeKalb, Sue Loeffler, the director of emergency management, said her staff is meeting with road, drainage and sanitation crews. Workers are tuning up chainsaws. She’s been spreading the word on El Niño during her talks to community groups, senior centers and neighborhood associations, advising them to have a “go” bag ready.
Flooding can be especially challenging to prepare for, Loeffler said. During many extreme forms of weather, people can seek shelter inside their home.
“Flooding chases you out of your house,” Loeffler said.
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