Box of Light is made possible thanks to these visionaries:
I've been hearing conflicting reports of what to expect as we swing back into an El Niño weather cycle. Will we still get that dream run of easterly and north-easterly swells that seem to have swarmed us over recent years? Will cyclones still form in the Pacific? Will the sea temperatures plummet? Will the week-long ground swells return?
As far as I can tell from scouring the NIWA sites we are coming out of a La Niña cycle into an El Niño one, which we have been in throughout October and it's expected to last through to January at least.
To understand it firstly we need to learn about the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO for short.
ENSO is a naturally occurring global climate cycle of which El Niño and La Niña are the opposite phases. ENSO influences rainfall, temperature, and wind patterns throughout the world, including right here in New Zealand. El Niño and La Niña episodes occur on average every few years and may persist for a year or two.
During a La Niña climate cycle, like what we have just had, ocean water from the coast of South America to the central tropical Pacific cools to below-average temperatures. According to NIWA, this cooling occurs because of stronger than normal easterly trade winds, which churn cooler, deeper seawater up to the ocean’s surface. When this happens sea temperatures can warm above average in the far western Pacific. While the unusually cool water in the eastern Pacific suppresses clouds, rain, and thunderstorms, the actual formation and frequency of tropical cyclones in the western Pacific do not vary greatly from cycle to cycle.
However, during a La Niña event, northeasterly winds tend to become more common bringing moist, rainy conditions to northeastern areas of the North Island and reduced rainfall to the lower and western South Island. And La Niña physics accounts for the increase in extended periods of east and northeast swell. Additionally, warmer than average air and sea temperatures can occur around New Zealand during La Niña.
During the El Niño phase, which we are moving into, we are more likely to experience stronger or more frequent winds from the west over the summer months. This in turn can encourage dryness in eastern areas and more rain in the west. In winter, the winds tend to blow more from the south, causing colder temperatures across the country and more snowfall events. In spring and autumn, southwesterly winds are more common.
So for our Otago coastline, we could see the return of decent and long-lived groundswell, albeit with cooler water, and possibly stronger offshore winds. Thankfully we should still get a tropical cyclone or two to light up the North Coast. In the south, surfers benefit no matter what phase the ENSO cycle is in.
See you at the beach ... Derek
PS Over the years we have whittled away from having four surf shops in Dunedin; Quarry Beach Surfboards, Boardbase, Amazon and Hydro Surf, to just two with Amazon and Hydro Surf surviving and then we could only get hardware like boards and fins at Hydro. Well, that has changed now with Backdoor entering the fray with a new store where the old Kathmandu shop was. Geoff Hutchison, who runs Backdoor's 25 locations, sat down with me for a coffee at the Esplanade this past week and shared his insights into the state of the surf industry right now, the Dunedin move and why he backs Billy Stairmand and Paige Hareb with such conviction. Full story on New Zealand Surf Journal right now: Surf Business: In Deep With Backdoor Owner, Hutch.
Box of Light is made possible thanks to these visionaries: