Mesonet Ticker for April 9, 2026

                
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April 9, 2026      April 9, 2026      April 9, 2026      April 9, 2026


Yo soy el niño!




Now why in the heck (for crying out loud!) would I be talking about something
that could impact us a half a year from now when we have active weather in the
state starting tonight, and ramping up even more early next week?

Because that would be the sane, rational thing to do.

Okay, let's Tock about those storm chances. We start out in the Panhandle and
far northern OK tonight with a marginal chance of severe weather, then across the
northern half of the state tomorrow, then western OK on Saturday.







Maybe some hail, some high winds, and the best part...heavy rainfall. But then
things get interesting Sunday through Wednesday with higher chances of severe
weather. Of note: the SPC risk maps for the 4-8 period are pinging our area
already, which can often be a sign of significant severe weather being
possible with the oft-preached caveat by this here Ticker writer that the
forecast can and probably WILL change as we get closer to those days, AND not
always for the better!









Oh yeah, the rain. Maybe a bit too much in some places. Some folks swear there
can never be too much, but of course that's not true at all. We are a state in
need of a good soaking, however, with 99% of the state STILL in drought despite
last week's nice rains.



You can't end 8 months of deficits with one week's rainfall, after all. But we
did knock it down a bit and left it vulnerable to another closely-timed
rainfall event like we might see over the next week. We can't keep doing the
weeks between events deal.



Still not enough in some places, but it would be a start once again, and a good
second act in others.

Now, back to ENSO and el niño and La Nina and all that jazz. After a fading La
Niña helped dominate the past couple of years and help give us all that drought,
the tropical Pacific has now settled into ENSO-neutral conditions—but probably
not for long. The latest guidance from the CPC shows about a 60–62% chance that
El Niño develops by early to mid-summer 2026, with odds increasing further into
late summer and fall. In fact, once it gets going, El Niño is favored to
persist through the end of the year, as you can see from the top graphic.

Subsurface warmth building beneath the Pacific and emerging wind patterns are
the key signals forecasters are watching, although—as always with spring
forecasts—there’s still a decent spread in outcomes. However, those wind
patterns are giving forecasters quite a bit of confidence in this forecast
despite what's known as the "spring predictability barrier" that tends to
limit that confidence (and has given us some false alarms in recent years).

As for how strong this event might become, that’s where things get more
interesting—and more uncertain. Current outlooks allow for a wide range of
possibilities, from a weak event to something much stronger, with roughly a
1-in-4 chance of a “very strong” El Niño (≥ +2.0°C in Niño-3.4) by winter.
Some longer-range model signals and recent analysis suggest the Pacific could
be primed for a higher-end event if ocean-atmosphere feedbacks fully couple
during the summer. But that coupling—those reinforcing bursts of westerly winds
and subsurface heat—is far from guaranteed this early in the game, so
confidence in a “super” outcome remains limited. Check out this graph from CPC
that shows the probability of differing strengths of this possible el niño.



How to read it? Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor, not a scienti...oh wait, I am a
scientist. Well just look at the October-November-December (OND) three-month
period. There you can see there's a 93% chance of SOME strength of el niño (and
a 7% chance of ENSO-Neutral, in gray). Now within that el niño stack, there's
a  16% chance of a weak el niño, a 27% chance of a moderate el niño, a 27% chance
of a strong el niño, and a 23% chance of a super-strong (or very strong) el niño.
Pretty good eyes, eh? Well, I am also reading it off of a data table.



Now if El Niño does take hold—and especially if it strengthens—it would have
broad implications heading into late 2026 and early 2027. For the southern U.S.,
including Oklahoma to some degree, El Niño winters often tilt the odds toward a
more active storm track and wetter conditions.



Now it depends on where that enhanced sub-tropical jet sets up, but if it's a
bit farther north into our area, it could have significant impacts, especially
if it's a strong or super-strong el niño.





And we definitely don't want a weak el niño, either, because that can just mean
more drought at times. The current forecast strength gives us a weak event
possibility of only 16%, so that's good. For now, at least.



An interesting note anecdotally, back during the "Godzilla" super-strong el niño
of 2015-16, as it was getting ramped up, very uncharacteristically in spring
2015 instead of later in the year, we ended up with our wettest month in state
history, AND wettest year in state history, and neither was even close.



There are MORE caveats, of course. Always with the caveats. The timing is a bit
interesting, at least, of how the el niño developed and how the rain fell.
The record-wet May 2015 occurred during the strengthening phase of the 2015–16
El Niño—not its peak—highlighting how ENSO can help load the pattern, even if
the most extreme impacts depend on the day-to-day storm track falling into
place at just the right time.

We can Tock more about it as we get through the spring and into summer when we
have a better idea of what we're looking at.

What we're NOT looking at is La Nina, supposedly, which is the best news of all!

Gary McManus
State Climatologist
Oklahoma Mesonet
Oklahoma Climate Survey
gmcmanus@ou.edu
                

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