You may have heard about the upcoming El Niño that is supposed to take shape this summer and potentially become very powerful by this fall into winter. Let’s dive into what this means, how it forms, and how it may potentially impact the weather pattern in western Pennsylvania for this summer and beyond. 

What is ENSO?

El Niño is just a phase or part of ENSO, the El Niño-Southern Oscillation. It is an interannual mode of climate variability with three phases: neutral, warm (El Niño), or cool (La Niña). By far, ENSO has the greatest influence on weather patterns across the globe.

ENSO is a natural part of Earth’s climate system that exhibits variability over the span of a few years. To determine the current phase of ENSO and how that phase may or may not change, we look at sea surface temperature anomalies over the Equatorial Pacific Ocean and what is occurring underneath the surface by up to several hundred meters. 

Right now, we are currently in the neutral phase of ENSO and are projected to head toward a strong warm phase or El Niño by mid-late summer that will last into the fall and upcoming winter.

What initiates and causes the shift?

Let’s start with the Walker Circulation, which is the physical mechanism that initiates and influences where warmer and cooler than normal seawater resides near the Equatorial Pacific Ocean.  

In the neutral phase of ENSO, the warmer sea surface temperatures are west of the International Date Line near Indonesia while cooler sea surface temperatures are positioned west of coastal South America. Above the warmer waters, we see enhanced rising motion leading to increased thunderstorms in the western Equatorial Pacific Ocean. While air rises and diverges in the upper atmosphere over the western Equatorial Pacific Ocean, it then converges and sinks over the eastern Equatorial Pacific Ocean. This sinking motion diverges at the ocean surface and helps enhance the trade winds which blow from east to west. 

The east-to-west trade winds are responsible for upwelling and maintaining the cooler waters near the Equatorial East Pacific Ocean. When these trade winds are enhanced, we see a stronger upwelling of cooler water in the Equatorial East Pacific and a piling up of warmer waters and enhanced thunderstorms in the equatorial West Pacific. This is called La Niña. 

However, when those trade winds weaken, this slows the upwelling process and the warmer sea surface temperatures from the western Pacific Ocean migrate east through enhanced low-level westerly wind bursts. Once the waters in the relative Niño3.4 region— the area monitored in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean to assign the ENSO index — warm to a certain threshold above normal (greater than or equal to +0.5 degrees Celsius) for at least five consecutive overlapping three-month periods, then an El Niño can be declared.

What are the latest trends and projections with this El Niño?

According to NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, El Niño is likely to emerge between June to August 2026 and persist through the end of the year. El Niño is pretty much expected by the end of year, and it’s likely that we’ll be dealing with a strong or very strong El Niño. The stronger the El Niño or La Niña, the more influence it has on the global weather patterns.

What El Niño means for western Pennsylvania 

So how can this year’s setup influence summer patterns, and what does it mean for western Pennsylvania if El Niño persists into the winter? 

When answering this question, it is extremely important to note a few things: no two El Niño or La Niña events are exactly alike. There are other factors that influence global weather patterns outside of ENSO, and planetary warming induced by human-caused climate change may cause modern-day El Niño, La Niña, and neutral episodes to behave differently compared to a past climate. We can still look at previous years with similar conditions to get a proxy and make an inference of how the upcoming year may trend.

For this year, 2023 is the closest modern-day match under this climate regime to how this El Niño is likely to evolve this summer. For western Pennsylvania, that summer featured near to slightly below normal temperatures and near normal summer precipitation. The following winter featured well above normal temps and slightly above normal precipitation.

1976 is next on my analog years list. This featured a weak to moderate La Niña early in the year, but El Niño emerged more slowly (like 2026 projections) and became very strong by late year. Summer temperatures were below normal with below normal precipitation. That following winter was much drier than normal.

1982 is my third analog year. Unlike 2026, 2023 and 1982, there was no winter to early spring La Niña, but El Niño emerged more slowly (like 2026 projections) and became very strong by late year.  During the summer, below normal temperatures were dominant with below normal precipitation. The following winter featured slightly above normal temperatures and below normal precipitation.

1991 and 1997 are also two years on my analog lists. The two commonalities among these years were below normal precipitation during the summer and a drier and warmer than normal following winter as El Niño peaked in intensity.  

Leanne Walker said that what quickly came out of thin air and started as a curiosity-grabber turned slightly chaotic.

“People near it didn’t know how to react, with some running away and others running right into it, and some not reacting at all!” said Walker, who captured the dust devil on video. “What struck me most was how fast it was moving and how much debris it picked up.”

At one point, the spout picks up what appears to be a rectangular object, which Walker later discovered was a piece of sheet metal dancing in the dust devil’s swirling winds. Others mentioned seeing cars with minor damage. There were no reported injuries.

Stunned spectators can be heard asking, “Is that dangerous?”

The soccer players played on, and “the referees and players seemed almost completely unfazed,” Walker said.

“The video only captures part of it — the dust devil was actually on the ground for 1–2 minutes in total.“

“Dust devils are pretty common and most occur under calm and sunny conditions,” Globe meteorologist Ken Mahan said, adding that they form when “the high sun angle warms up one part of the ground faster than the surrounding area. Think of a large parking lot surrounded by grass, covered by trees.”

The resulting pockets of air rise rapidly, leaving a low-pressure area in the center, which “pulls in surrounding air that can spiral inward and create a vortex in the right environment,” according to Bryce Williams, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Norton. “They are quite common, especially in open, flat areas during the warmer months.”

Most dust devils, he said, usually end up around 50 feet wide or less, but some can double that,” he said, and are on average 500 to 1,000 feet tall. “The winds are exceptionally localized and, while mostly harmless, can get as strong as 70 or 80 mph at times, lasting for a few minutes to about 10 minutes.” But those more powerful winds are rare, especially in the Northeast, Mahan said.

Although most of the time dust devils are more spectacle than threat, Williams said people should still steer clear of one if they do see one nearby.

“Although smaller than tornadoes and forming in a completely different way, dust devils can still be destructive, sometimes lifting debris into the air, creating dangerous projectiles,“ he said.

Mahan said they look dramatic, but they “can’t be warned” because they’re too small to be detected by weather radar. Mahan likened them to the “cousin to the spinning leaf mini-tornadoes we see in the fall.”

“Oftentimes, these remain invisible, but when they pass over a source of dust or dirt, like a ballfield, they become visible,” Williams noted.

It’s safe to say no red card was issued to the dust devil as it tried to stop Sunday’s soccer game.

Carlos Muñoz can be reached at carlos.munoz@globe.com. Follow him @ReadCarlos and on Instagram @Carlosbrknews.