Winter to wait on the sidelines as El Nino extends fall: The Weather Network outlook

It’s shaping up to be a mild fall across much of Canada, The Weather Network’s forecast suggests, with a potentially historic El Nino expected to prolong the season and delay winter’s arrival. September and October will still bring the usual swings between warm spells and bursts of chilly, stormy weather, the network’s three-month outlook says. But the balance is expected to trend milder and, in many regions, drier than normal as the season progresses, said senior meteorologist Doug Gillham.

“Winter is probably going to wait on the sidelines for a while,” he said in an interview. The main reason is El Nino, the climate phenomenon tied to shifting patches of warm water in the Pacific Ocean, Gillham said. Several forecasters suggest this could be among the strongest El Ninos on record.

The global weather disrupter is set to spike temperatures, already elevated due to human-caused climate change, further raising the risk of serious floods, drought and extreme heat in some regions into 2027. While there will be catastrophic impacts globally, it’s “not all doom and gloom for the fall in Canada,” said Gillham. El Nino tends to shift the storm track south of the border, fill Canada with milder pacific air and limit the ability of cold arctic air to plunge south, he said.

The result could mean fewer classic fall storms, a milder start to winter and fewer Atlantic hurricanes. But an unprecedented El Nino could introduce some surprises and uncertainty into the forecast, Gillham said. “Don’t be lulled into a sense of, ‘oh we’re just going to have a dry fall and we don’t have to worry about any storms.’ Fewer storms doesn’t mean that the storms that occur won’t pack a punch,” he said.

While El Nino is the main driver of the fall outlook, conditions vary by region. British Columbia’s reprieve from summer heat came earlier than in recent years. But warmer, drier conditions are expected to dominate the rest of September and into October, which may be of little relief to wildfire-weary communities in the interior, said Gillham.

“The rest of September into the beginning of October is not good news in that we need more rain than we’ve seen,” he said. Along the coast, precipitation levels are expected to get closer to normal as the season deepens. A delayed start to winter is expected across the province, but alpine regions may just be cold enough to get a decent start to ski…