Impacts of 1997–98 El Niño– Generated Weather in the United States

The societal, economic, and environmental impacts of weather events and climate conditions in the United States normally vary spatially across the nation, and for any given period such as a season or year, the impacts reveal a mix of regional winners and losers. This was certainly true with the impacts resulting from El Niño-generated weather during 1997–98. The early official predictions of more storms in parts of the nation and heavy precipitation for the South and Far West (Climate Prediction Center August 1997) created concerns about damaging impacts. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) (1997a,b) issued warnings to promote mitigative activities, and with the help of considerable media hype (Glantz 1998), a nationwide perception developed that all “El Niño weather” was going to be damaging. For example, FEMA (1997c) releases and the Financial Times (1997) tied the strong El Niño 1997–98 conditions to the huge U.S. losses from the equally strong El Niño of 1982–83, with 161 killed and losses of $2.2 billion (1983 dollars). Such citations likely resulted from El Niño forecasts that included comparisons of the strong (warm) El Niño of 1997–98 to the magnitude of the 1982–83 event [Climate Prediction Center (CPC) 1997]. California newspapers focused on the 1982–83 losses in California, which included 14 killed and $265 million in damages (San Francisco Chronicle, 1997; Sacramento Bee, 1997). This helped lead to considerable concern and launched major mitigation endeavors in California where storm and rain predictions were ominous. Impacts of 1997–98 El Niño– Generated Weather in the United States