El Niño will be terrible. Or not. The story of a 'weather event'

 

As you have heard, we're entering a Super El Niño season, with equatorial Pacific Ocean water temperatures 4 to 6 degrees warmer than usual.

That might cause a significantly wetter winter than usual for the West Coast, based on the history of El Niño events (this is the biggest El Niño since at least 1950!). Unless it results in a regular winter. It could also mean less rain than usual. It's hard to tell, but we know one thing: SUPER EL NIÑO IS COMING.

I'm not here to make fun of scientists (they don't need anyone to make fun of them. Scientists already wear pocket protectors and safety goggles, even when writing an incredibly complex math equation on an old-school green chalkboard, if the cartoons are any indication). Scientists are important. They find cures for diseases and explain how the universe works.

And climatologists – academics who study the weather, as well as those on TV who remind us, "don't forget your umbrella! There might be a few sprinkles during the morning commute!" – have made dramatic improvements in our understanding of and preparation for hurricanes, floods, blizzards, heat waves and tornadoes.

But while doing that, they apparently gather every few years to invent new phrases to describe routine events.

To be clear, El Niño isn't a "routine event," although it's possible that "Super El Niño" is a fake phrase.

If so, it would join myriad wonky weather phrases invented in the past 20 years. For instance, I mentioned to Mrs. Brad during the October heat wave that people were probably wondering when the heat dome would break. She looked at me like I was making up words. She'd never heard "heat dome."

How is that possible? Every time there's a heat wave, journalists and climatologists talk about a heat dome, which apparently means the same thing as a "heat wave," but refers to . . . I don't know, maybe a hot football stadium? Is the Heat Dome the name of the NFL stadium in Phoenix? I definitely hear or read that phrase every time there's a heat wave.

Heat dome isn't alone. Remember when we used to have rainy days? Now we have "atmospheric rivers," which sounds more dramatic. And means the same thing.

More broadly, every time there's a windstorm, rainstorm or heat wave, it's called a "weather event," which means the same thing as "weather." (In this case, "event" is similar to "process," which former Daily Republic ace reporter Ryan McCarthy held in disdain. Ryan insisted "process" was rarely if ever needed. It wasn't "interview process," it was "interviews." It wasn't "budgetary process," it was "budgeting.")

"Weather events" are just weather. And the thing about weather is that it changes. While I appreciate that those who use science to predict the weather have gotten better at warning us of potential dangers (heck, for the coming Super El Niño, I'll probably . . . uh . . . buy an umbrella), the constant invention of more dramatic words to describe things for which there are already descriptors is amusing.

Maybe we should just lean into it. Why stop with "weather event" and "atmospheric river" and "heat dome?" For years, I advocated calling those warm easterly winds we get in the autumn (which are called "Santa Ana winds" in Southern California) "Rio Vista winds." Alas, no one followed my lead.

But as we prepare for the Super El Niño, maybe we should add some other weather phrases. Here are my suggestions and how they would be used:

Windy: "As the high pressure recedes, expect a Zypher wall, with winds up to 30 mph in Fairfield-Suisun."

Sunny: "Look for a significant solar event, with our closest dwarf star shining in all its glory."

Morning frost: "We expect plenty of  ground crystallization in the early morning hours, which should give way as we get another solar event."

High humidity: "Expect a sticky wicket Tuesday, as a weather system moves through with remnants of an atmospheric river in the Pacific."

Low humidity: "We face aridity syndrome this weekend, with the possibility of a Super Dry event."

Like it or not, the Super El Niño weather event is coming and atmospheric rivers are possible this winter. Or maybe not. Or perhaps we'll get enough rain to know it's winter, but not enough to determine whether the Super El Niño played a role.

Just wait until next year, though. We may have a La Niña, which means . . . well, it will certainly cause a weather event and likely some new phrases.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

If you're slightly speeding, you're normal(ish)

Congratulations, you're normal.

When you drive 75 mph on Interstate 80 in one of the two "slow" lanes, you're regular.

When you go 65 mph on Highway 12 to Napa or to Rio Vista, you're typical.

Speeding (in certain situations) is normal!

According to a survey from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety (AAAFTS, since apparently every organization needs an acronym), most drivers agree that posted speed limits are appropriate, but they also consider anything within 10 mph of that limit to be OK. (Didn't you think that was the rule, that you wouldn't get a ticket unless you were doing more than 10 mph over the speed limit? I did until about the third time I got a ticket for 10 mph over the limit.)

Furthermore, about half of drivers surveyed think keeping pace with traffic is safer than obeying the posted speed limit. Those people probably yell at someone for driving 60 mph on I-80 as we swerve to get around them. (Did I say "we" in the second half of the sentence? Oops!)

An article about the speeding survey appeared in the Insurance Journal (I have a group subscription to Ladies Home Journal, the Wall Street Journal, Insurance Journal and the official magazine of the Federal Association of Plumbers, the Urinal Journal. Hahahaha. Hilarious!)

The Insurance Journal, of course, was concerned about the fact that most of us consider a 65 mph speed zone to really mean "about 75 mph." And that we want to move with the flow of traffic, rather than slow everyone down.

Insurance people don't like normal people.

However, there was some good news for those concerned about speed: Most drivers are fine with more police presence in areas with a history of speed-related crashes, including the often-maligned traffic cameras. They also like those in-vehicle warnings that alert drivers when they exceed the speed limit.

But staying with the flow of traffic or going up to 10 mph over the limit is OK.

Personally, I wish I had this data when I was in my 20s and 30s, an era in which I received 10 speeding tickets. Yes, 10.

I wasn't a speed demon. Really. I was mostly inattentive in a way that led to me not realizing police were watching me go 35 mph in a 25 mph zone or 65 mph in a 55 mph zone.

Nine of my 10 tickets were for going 10 mph over the speed limit (the exception: I got caught going 40 mph on the 25-mph "Armijo curve" of Texas Street). I was once ticketed while driving on Interstate 40 from by a California Highway Patrol officer who told me he'd been following me for 10 miles and wouldn't have stopped me if I slowed down. I told him I never saw him (likely because I was listening to music or talking with Mrs. Brad, who wasn't amused).

Had this survey been around back in the day, I would have used it in one of the several times I challenged my tickets. "Your Honor, I am just like most people. Everyone goes 65 mph in 55 mph zones, according to a survey. I ask for dismissal."

Alas, that opportunity never came. I lost every appeal (including one where I was ticketed after a plane indicated to an officer on the ground in Mendocino County that I was speeding. What I actually was doing was trying to get around a fully packed VW bus that was consistently crossing the line between the two southbound lanes, making it unsafe for me to slowly pass. Unfortunately, I made my appeal by letter and was turned down.).

I'm not saying speeding is right. It's dangerous and you shouldn't do it. However, the evidence suggests that most of us think it's OK if we're not racing past everyone.

Also, sometimes, the police aren't monsters. They sometimes let you go despite an infraction.

It rarely happened to me, but the last time I was pulled over – about 15 years ago in Suisun City – it did. I  pulled from Marina Boulevard onto Highway 12, heading to work, when there were suddenly flashing lights in my rearview mirror.

The officer came to the window, asked for my license and registration and then asked what they always ask: "Do you know why I pulled you over?"

I was ready this time. "Yeah, I was on my phone. Sorry. I shouldn't have done that."

"Oh, you were on your phone? I didn't know that. I pulled you over because you rolled through the stoplight."

Oops.

Amazingly, he let me go with a warning. Perhaps he'd talked to friends who told them about all the times they wrote me up for going 10 mph over the limit Or maybe he knew the results of this survey 15 years early.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

How we survived Hawai'i's Labor Day Storm of 2026

Hawai'i is supposed to be a paradise. It's not supposed to be more blustery than the windiest day in Fairfield and Suisun City.

Well, there we were, Mrs. Brad and I on a trip to Oahu in early September. That's when Hurricane Lowell skated across the Pacific Ocean, narrowly missing Kaua'i, but causing extensive damage to that island.

We weren't on Kaua'i, but we were close enough that we experienced what was then classified as Tropical Storm Lowell – a wild weather event with huge winds over Labor Day night. Spoiler alert: It wasn't paradise.

First, a disclaimer: We aren't victims. We were in Hawai'i, after all – not everyone can do that. Also, we didn't get hurt and have no financial responsibility to repair damage caused by the winds. We were just two Californians who wondered how long the power would be out and whether the windows of our Airbnb home would withstand the winds.

Having lived in Suisun City for three decades, I'm familiar with wind. I'm also familiar with windstorms, which seem worse in Solano County than most places. I have laid in bed many nights, wondering whether my fence would be standing in the morning. We had fences blown down. We had our basketball standard crash forward.

My most compelling major storm memory is of hurricane-force winds in December 1988, a massive storm that roared and shook windows. During the height of the storm, several storefront windows in downtown Fairfield blew out, as did windows at the Solano Mall. The Solano Drive-In's screen was destroyed (and never replaced, unless you consider the Raleys that stands on that site on North Texas Street a "replacement").

Most important to the then-sports editor, the games at the Ed Hopkins Classic basketball tournament at Armijo High were postponed. Trees fell across the roads. A shed near my house in Suisun City was blown into a tree.

It was a whopper of a storm.

Perhaps the Oahu Labor Day Storm of 2026 (as I call it) wasn't that bad, but it felt like it.

Mrs. Brad and I knew problems were looming, as residents warned us to store water and have food available in case of a power outage or water shutoff. The latter never happened, but the power went out at about 8:30 p.m. Monday night.

During a major power outage, you realize how much you depend on electricity. It was dark at 8:30 p.m., but we weren't ready for bed. So we stayed up and watched. The winds were slamming our window and getting worse as the night went along. A neighbor's carport roof was screeching as the winds tried to pull it off. Every 20 minutes or so, there would be a loud slam as a large branch (or tree) fell.

Enduring a storm at your own house makes you worry about damage that you have to repair. Enduring a storm at an unfamiliar house makes you worry that a huge branch could come crashing through a window at any time because you didn't pay enough attention to identify nearby trees

Also: A night with a wind storm is a long, long night. On the night of the Labor Day Storm of 2026, neither of us slept well. The following morning, as the winds died down, we groggily walked around the neighborhood and saw the damage. Mostly, it was huge branches that fell, so not bad.

But the power remained out. I worried about the ability to charge my smartphone, which controls my insulin pump (the plan: Use backup batteries to charge it. Use my laptop to charge it. Drive to somewhere with power to charge it.). Fortunately, power came back on about noon, ending the anxiety.

The following days were excessively humid, due to the storm's remnants. But (in Hawai'i, at a rental house, swimming every day in the Pacific ocean while on a vacation), we survived.

Folks in Kaua'i and its tiny neighboring island of Ni'hau weren't so lucky. The saw extensive damage and days without power. Tourists were advised to avoid Kaua'i for the foreseeable future, undoubtedly damaging the island's economy.

Back on Oahu, we endured humidity, had to move some branches and then resumed going to the beach.

What a nightmare!

The Labor Day Storm of 2026 was frightening, but it didn't ruin our vacation.

Now, I guess, I feel like a jerk for overreacting.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.