IEM Daily Feature
Wednesday, 29 May 2019

Blame El Niño?

Posted: 29 May 2019 09:08 PM

Finding a scapegoat for lousy weather is always of interest. Can El Niño / La Niña be blamed for our recent two months of cool and wet weather? The featured chart plots the combination of Iowa areal averaged temperature and precipitation for April and May along with the previous January's value of ENSO 3.4 index. The lag with the index is due to the time it takes for the tele-connection to be felt in Iowa. The chart indicates that not much correlation exists between these plotted fields, so it is tough to blame our present weather on the weak La Niña presently existing.

Voting:
Good = 8
Bad = 0
Abstain = 1