El Nino is officially here: What does that mean for Alabama?

La Nina is gone, but El Nino is officially here to take its place on the global climate stage.

Climate forecasters announced on Thursday that El Nino is back, and it could affect the Atlantic hurricane season as well as U.S. weather in the fall and winter.

NOAA defines El Nino this way: “El Nino is a natural climate phenomenon marked by warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean near the equator, which occurs on average every 2-7 years. El Nino’s impacts on the climate extend far beyond the Pacific Ocean.”

A group of climate experts including the National Weather Service and NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center issued an El Nino advisory on Thursday, which means that El Nino conditions are present and are expected to continue.

The report said that El Nino isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. It is forecast to gradually strengthen into the winter months.

What does that mean for Alabama? It could mean several things, according to meteorologists.

“I think we may be able to see it in Alabama perhaps not directly but maybe indirectly,” said John De Block, the warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Birmingham.

“Typically El Nino generally decreases the hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. If we reduce the number of hurricanes then that lowers our chances of being affected by a hurricane or tropical storm. But it doesn’t eliminate it.”

NOAA issued its hurricane outlook for the Atlantic in late May and is expecting a near-average season, with 12-17 named storms (that includes tropical storms and hurricanes), five to nine hurricanes and one to four major hurricanes (Category 3 or stronger storms).

According to NOAA an average season in the Atlantic basin has 14 named storms, seven hurricanes and three major hurricanes.

But it’s too soon to let your guard down, unfortunately.

“That doesn’t mean one of those can’t hit Alabama,” De Block said.

“It only takes one -- that’s a mantra you’ve heard us use before, and we’re going to continue to use it, because it does only take one landfalling hurricane in the wrong location for it to be a major impact. Katrina, for example, was in an El Nino year. So El Nino does not make us immune from hurricanes. In the long run, it just means a lower number of tropical storms and hurricanes.”

That will be El Nino’s main affect on the summer months. But it could also affect Alabama’s weather into the fall and winter months, also known as our secondary severe weather season.

“There is a lot of variabilities that come into play that will affect if we have an increase severe weather or not,” De Block said. “And each El Nino is different. Generally speaking, El Nino will bring more storm systems traversing through the area. That may end up meaning a dull, wet winter, or it might mean an increase in severe weather.

“Will it have an impact on the weather in Alabama? Yes. What kind of impact is pretty much impossible to tell at this point.”