2026 - Our Rides in Words, Photos, Maps and Videos

[stompandgo]

What does a Super El-Nino winter mean to your area? For us, I hear that it means a mild winter. Our hurricane season is almost over and we've had very little activity other than a few big Nor'easters.

 

[Jeremy McCreary]

What does a Super El-Nino winter mean to your area? For us, I hear that it means a mild winter. Our hurricane season is almost over and we've had very little activity other than a few big Nor'easters.

Generally wetter, stormier winters, increased snowpack in the high mountains, higher tides due to Kelvin waves and the thermal expansion of the top of the water column, and supression of the normal coastal upwelling that brings deep nutrients to the surface. The last hurts fish populations and the fishermen and sea birds that depend on them.

However, we often see unexpected effects, and with the magnitude of this El Nino, the meteorologists are predicting even more unpredictability.

This year, SoCal had the compounding factor of an unrelated marine heat wave (in sea surface temperature, not air temperature) already in place when El Nino arrived.

In combination, the first El Nino Kelvin wave and thermal expansion of sea water have already added up to 2 ft to our normal astronomical tides. And as Earth approaches perihelion in earliest January, the astronomical tides will be at their biggest all year. Gulp.

As you've already seen in the news, big storm waves rolling in on top of high tides 2 ft above normal spell big trouble for the California coast. And as we saw during this year's abnormally busy East Pacific hurricane season, we get big waves from Pacific storms nowhere near the California coast.

It's going to be a very interesting winter here in coastal SoCal.

 

[DaveMatthews]

What does a Super El-Nino winter mean to your area? For us, I hear that it means a mild winter. Our hurricane season is almost over and we've had very little activity other than a few big Nor'easters.

Similar prediction of a mild winter for us in B.C.

 

[Jeremy McCreary]

Similar prediction of a mild winter for us in B.C.

This made me wonder, do El Nino effects on coastal sea level and surface temperatures typically reach you in Vancouver? Short answer: For stronger events like the current one, yes.

Long answer from Gemini AI:

During strong El Niño events, coastally trapped Kelvin waves routinely propagate all the way up the North American West Coast to the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia (around 50°N), and during major events, measurable sea-level and temperature signals can reach as far north as the Gulf of Alaska (around 55°N–60°N).
As these subsurface waves travel poleward from the equator at roughly 150 miles per day, several factors govern how far north they remain coherent:

• California to the Pacific Northwest (32°N–50°N): The wave signal remains strong and well-defined along California, Oregon, Washington, and Vancouver Island, where it temporarily raises local sea levels by 6 to 12 inches, deepens the thermocline, and suppresses cold, nutrient-rich upwelling.
• Gulf of Alaska (55°N–60°N): During "super" El Niños (such as 1982–83, 1997–98, and 2015–16), tide gauges and satellite altimetry detect the poleward-propagating sea-level anomaly wrapping around the Gulf of Alaska before dissipating against complex coastal topography and strong local atmospheric forcing.
• Energy Loss Along the Way: As a coastal Kelvin wave moves into higher latitudes, it gradually weakens due to friction, scattering from underwater canyons and islands (like the Channel Islands or Vancouver Island), and offshore energy radiation as Rossby waves.

Because the wave takes weeks to months to travel from the tropics to high latitudes, the oceanic sea-level rise and warming arrive in British Columbia and Alaska well after they hit Southern California—often compounding winter storm surges and king tides.

I don't believe everything AI says, but this aligns well with other sources I"ve checked.

Next question is for you: Does coastal Vancouver get wave damage during stronger El Nino events?

Most of our big winter swell comes from big Gulf of Alaska storms. These waves attenuate little with distance over open ocean, but Vancouver's a lot closer to the source than we are.

If you get higher sea levels from El Nino, and the Gulf of Alaska gets stormier, that could be a wave erosion problem for Vancouver's west coast. Any idea how that's played out historically?

 

[DaveMatthews]

This made me wonder, do El Nino effects on coastal sea level and surface temperatures typically reach you in Vancouver? Short answer: For stronger events like the current one, yes.

Long answer from Gemini AI:


I don't believe everything AI says, but this aligns well with other sources I"ve checked.

Next question is for you: Does coastal Vancouver get wave damage during stronger El Nino events?

Most of our big winter swell comes from big Gulf of Alaska storms. These waves attenuate little with distance over open ocean, but Vancouver's a lot closer to the source than we are.

If you get higher sea levels from El Nino, and the Gulf of Alaska gets stormier, that could be a wave erosion problem for Vancouver's west coast. Any idea how that's played out historically?

Yes, but as your research indicates, Vancouver Island is a significant buffer indeed. Over time of course beaches around here on the "lower mainland" do need to be refreshed, and sea walls repaired etc. But in my lifetime structures such as the Stanley park sea wall have required little repair and very little "shoring up".
Here's a decent write up...

State of the Beach/State Reports/BC/Beach Erosion

beachapedia.org