The Sonoran Avalanche Center - SAC

08/28/2026

08/27/2026

08/13/2026

This is the El Niño tongue. That red blade running down the equator, root pinned to South America, tapering west toward the dateline — that’s it. Here’s what it’s doing.

Baseline state first. Easterly trades drive Ekman divergence at the equator — Coriolis flips sign across the line, so surface water splits poleward both directions and cold thermocline water fills the gap. Those same winds pile warm water in the west, tilting the thermocline from ~150m near Indonesia to ~40m off Peru. You get the cold tongue: 22–24°C, sitting inside a basin whose western pool runs 29–30°C. That 5–6K zonal gradient sustains the trades that sustain the gradient. Bjerknes feedback. The tongue builds the thing that builds the tongue.

The red is that feedback running in reverse. The cold tongue erased and a warm one written over it.

Note the plotted field: relative SST anomaly — departure from the tropical mean, not a fixed baseline. That’s the correct frame in a warming ocean, because convection responds to how warm a patch is relative to its surroundings, not in absolute terms. Peak past +3 against the coast, decaying to near zero by the dateline, cold anomalies over the Maritime Continent. East-based. Thermocline feedback carrying it — mean upwelling now entraining anomalously warm subsurface water — rather than zonal advection near the dateline.

Now the global piece, which gets mangled constantly.

08/05/2026

RFK Jr. said preliminary analysis suggests Grand Canyon river guides have unknowingly been producing “pooptides,” naturally occurring compounds formed during multi-day rafting trips that he believes could revolutionize American health.