The Importance Of El Niño Event In California

With the approaching El Niño event expected to be among the largest events recorded an above average rain season is expected. If the above average rain occurs, it will be beneficial in creating larger snow packs and replenishing aquifers. But this would not be enough to replenish the volume of water consumed in the past four years. The rainfall benefits created by an El Niño event is not always evenly distributed throughout the entire state. There have been only a few events that have distributed water throughout the state, these El Niño events occurred in 1877-1978, 1982-1983, and 1997-1998 (Seager 2015). Although it is certain that the El Niño weather event will occur, the overall intensity can only be determined as time passes and the El

Erosional frequency along mountainous terrain leads to landslides and debris flows in times of intense weather. Disasters happen when failure of materials such as coastal structures, bluffs, and unconsolidated sediments are surpassed. For example, during the 1982-1983 El Niño, the heavy coastal damage that occurred was attributed to the abnormally higher tides, sea levels, and storm induced waves (Storlazzi 1998). During the storms created by El Niño in 1978 and 1983 major damage was inflicted too much of the developed areas along California’s cost. In 1978, the damage caused to business and residential areas was estimated at $18,000,000. While the El Niño events of 1983 was estimated to have caused over $100,000,000 in damages to California’s coastline. Additionally, during 1910-1995 there were approximately 61 storms that struck California’s coast. It is estimated that 75% of the storms, which occurred during 1910-1995, were during El Niño events (Storlazzi 1998). For the period studied, it is estimated that there are roughly 1.2 damaging coastal storms per El Niño event, compared to only 0.3 storms per non-El Niño year (Storlazzi