Record El Niño raises UK winter storm and cold-snap warnings, Met Office urges caution

Right · 1The Daily Mail reported on 27 October that Britain had been hit by Storms Austen and Boelo in the past week, with forecasters tracking a third system, Storm Chloe, heading towards the UK. 1 Right · 1The Mail said the storms brought wind gusts of more than 70mph to exposed coastal areas, damaged buildings and cancelled transport services; it also reported that several people died, thousands of homes lost power, and flooding led to warnings and evacuations. 1 Right · 1Prof Ilan Kelman of University College London told the Mail that El Niño typically means a warmer, stormier autumn and a colder, stormier winter, and that people should be ready for cold and storms from January to March, including snow in London. 1

Right · 1Kelman also said no individual storm can be blamed directly on El Niño or climate change, and the Mail quoted a Met Office spokeswoman saying the recent storms followed a shift to a more active North Atlantic jet stream and that El Niño is only one of several influences, so the storms cannot be directly attributed to it. 1 Right · 1The Mail cited World Meteorological Organisation figures that tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures could rise as much as 3.8°C above average between November 2026 and January 2027, against a 0.5°C anomaly needed to declare an El Niño; WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said this was 'literally off the monitoring charts that we have used for the past four decades'. 1 Right · 1The Met Office spokeswoman said El Niño can favour a wetter and windier start to winter and cooler, drier conditions later in the season. 1

Right · 1Other commentators quoted by the Mail included flooding expert Dave Throup, who wrote that big El Niño years raise the chance of a stormy UK autumn, and historian Peter Frankopan, who wrote in The Spectator that El Niño disrupts the Atlantic jet stream and raises the risk of flooding, particularly in western Britain. 1 Right · 1GB News reported on 29 October that the El Niño, which it called the most powerful ever documented, is now expected to weaken the Arctic polar vortex as early as November rather than around January 2027, citing Nasa forecasting data. 2 Right · 1GB News said Nasa data projected vortex wind speed falling to 12.04 m/s on 31 October, 9.15 m/s on 1 November and 4.15 m/s by 3 November. 2

Right · 1It explained that a weakened vortex or sudden stratospheric warming can make the jet stream 'snake' and produce blocking high pressure over the North Atlantic and Scandinavia, bringing dry, cold conditions to northern Europe including Britain, with bitter easterly winds and possible heavy snow as in early 2018. 2 Right · 1GB News noted meteorologists caution that sudden stratospheric warming events can only be forecast with confidence about a week ahead and that surface effects in the UK typically take several weeks to appear; it also quoted the Met Office saying El Niño 'is associated with increased risk of cold snaps'. 2