El Nino expected to return for a wild winter

Climate troublemaker El Nino is forecast for this coming fall and winter, according to the Climate Prediction Center.

The agency said there’s a 65 percent chance it will form by the winter, prompting it to issue an El Nino watch.

In the U.S., a strong El Nino can result in a stormy winter along the West Coast, a wet winter across the South, and a warmer-than-average winter in the Pacific Northwest and northern Rocky Mountains.

“Conditions are now favorable for the emergence of El Nino sometime in the next six months,” Michelle L’Heureux, a forecaster with the prediction center, told Bloomberg News. “The watch hinges on that word, ‘favorable.’ ”

El Nino is a periodic natural warming of ocean water in the tropical Pacific that affects weather in the U.S. and around the world. Globally, the climate pattern can bring dry conditions to Indonesia, the Philippines and Australia.

In South America, Brazil can get drought, while Argentina may get more rain, Bloomberg said.

Its effects typically peak between

January and March in the U.S.

During an El Nino, water temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean warm up a few degrees for an extended time – typically at least three to five months.

Forecasters say there’s a 50 percent chance El Nino will develop during the late summer or early autumn. If it forms by then, it could help suppress the number of hurricanes that form in the Atlantic during that time.

However, El Ninos tend to increase hurricane activity in the eastern Pacific Ocean, which can affect Mexico, the U.S. Southwest and Hawaii.