Predicting Weather By The Moon - Xavier University Libraries

Weather By The Moon
called “años de abundancia” - years of abundance in Spanish.
In other regions, torrential rains brought ruin. Because
the warming often peaked around Christmas, the current
was nicknamed ‘El Niño’ - the Christ child in Spanish.
Eighteenth century European sailors recorded other
bizarre events in their logbooks . The coastal waters were
stained crimson with El Niño. Their ship hulls were rotting
in oxygen-depleted waters that were suddenly home to exotic
sea-snakes, alligators and sharks.
In a normal year, the trade winds blow from South
America to Asia, pushing warm water to the far reaches of
the western equatorial Pacific. During an El Niño, this pool
of warm water sloshes across the Pacific to Peru as the
normal winds weaken. The warmer-than-normal water adds
heat and moisture to the air above it, creating thunderclouds
and an atypical storm track with far-reaching effects.
High temperatures, flooding in parts of the Northern
Hemisphere in recent times - these add up to El Nino
weather patterns. During 1974 - 75 sea currents ceased to
flow strongly from the Southern Ocean causing fish to either
die or migrate to more fruitful areas to feed. Because
the normally nutritious current ceased to provide sufficient
food at that time, the fish departed and the sea birds died as
there was insufficient fish left to feed them and fishermen
went bankrupt.
In 1982, a monster-sized El Niño rolled across the
Pacific with wildly unexpected consequences. It was to date
the largest, most intense El Niño in modern times. Farmers
in Peru were up to their eyeballs in rain. Fires scorched
Borneo. Droughts hit Australia. An estimated 2,000 peo-
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