Advertisement First Look: Early Tornado Season Outlook What El Nino says about Severe Weather Share Shares Copy Link Copy

El Nino has been a huge talker for us these past few months. We have had the rain..and lots of it. And now it's time to shift our attention into early Spring and show what past strong El Nino years have done to our storm season.The image above shows the top 10 strongest El Nino years (this current El Nino is quite strong).For the main body of the state there have been about 14-28 Severe Thunderstorm or Tornado Watches issued during that 10 year stretch. Or roughly 1-3 per March. But you'll see that most of the watches have been concentrated in a zone from Oklahoma City to Elk City and south along The Red River. In other words, west of I-35 and south of I-40 is the target area for watches in March during strong El Nino years.But if we compare the strongest El Nino years vs. the strongest La Nina years... then this is what we see with our watches.Central and Eastern Oklahoma see a very quiet storm pattern in the month of March while Western Oklahoma sees activity increase slightly during El Nino years. But remember this is comparing the strong El Nino years vs the strong La Nina years.So why are comparing strong El Nino years vs strong La Nina years? Since both are quite extreme we have to compare apples to apples here (sorta).There are weak and moderate El Nino and La Nina patterns. So if we compare those together than during an El Nino year we see this:We see storm activity drop quite a bit during all El Nino years. Those inside the box see the effects of El Nino the most with activity well below average.So this is what we can take out of all this data. Activity will likely be below normal during the month of March for much of the state with the exception across Western Oklahoma where that is the best chance for there to be a watch.Of course what this does not take into account are the small events that can pop up. Remember this doesn't mean "NO WATCHES" but rather a below normal number.Stay tuned.16210136